Cicadas Hum
by deadflowerseverymorning
Summary: After Captain Tripps devastates humanity, leaving few alive around the United States, Maggie MacNeil is lost. She ventures out on a whim to find a woman she's only seen in dreams, and to defeat a man with the eyes of a monster. Join Maggie on her journey, where she encounters love and loss, as she finds the strength to stand. [Nick A., OC]
1. Chapter One

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part One:** _June 1990_

 **Chapter One**

Steam billowed from the mildly scalding water that showered Maggie MacNeil on the early morning of June 20th, 1990. She breathed in and out, listening to the steady _wshhh_ of the slightly rusty old shower head. It was to be a clear morning, but a monotonous one. Maggie pondered over the same old schedule she had for the day as she absentmindedly rubbed her scalp with the Walmart brand shampoo. The soap dripped from her hair, and stung her blue eyes. She heard the nasty coughing coming from somewhere else in the shabby apartment. _Sean must be up_. Maggie thought. He'd been sick for a couple days now, at first it'd just been a cold, but now her older brother seemed to be getting worse. She'd try and convince him to stay home from work today, but she guessed that it would be to no avail.

She shut off the water and climbed out of the cracked claw foot tub, clumsily whacking her shin on her way down to the floor. She took a ragged blue towel with frayed ends and scrubbed at her hair with it. She wrapped it around her middle, just below the armpits, and went to work blow-drying her hair. By the time it was dry fifteen minutes later, her light auburn hair fell in slight waves all the way down to the middle of her back. She'd been growing it out for quite some time. She took the mint green waitress uniform that sat folded on the back of the toilet. It looked similar to that of the uniforms of the waitresses at the Double R diner in the popular TV series, Twin Peaks. Maggie loved that show, she'd watched it every Thursday night at nine since it's premiere at the beginning of March. Yes, a thought that she often had pondered over that spring had been, 'Who killed Laura Palmer?' She was anxious for the conclusion of the series. She buttoned all her buttons and tucked her hair back in a clip, a few straggly pieces escaping at the front. But she suspected she might already be late, so she let it be. She slipped on her white stockings and stepped into the white keds they made her wear. She looked back in the mirror and sighed; she hated her uniform. But beggars can't be choosers, can they?

Maggie left the bathroom and heard the baby crying hoarsely; it was the baby who Sean had caught the cold from. Needless to say, the two male residents of the apartment had been sleeping restlessly for the past few nights. Maggie, however, had been dreaming the same distant, hazy dream over and over again for the a week. She vaguely remembered an old black woman singing a hymn, a tire swing, and a field of corn? She shook her head, most of the details were much too fuzzy to decipher. She rushed out into the kitchen and found Sean, holding the baby with his right arm, and frying some eggs with his left hand. Sean looked feverish, but baby Finn was even more so. He screamed his strained and sickly scream as Maggie wordlessly poured herself a quick cup of black coffee. Only the strong stuff for Maggie. She glanced at her black plastic waterproof watch. She loved that watch, it was one of the few items she owned that cost more than a few bucks. It had the time as well as the date, she'd always had a thing about the time. She'd always needed to know exactly what time it was as well as the day, and with that watch she always did. _7:45_. Only five minutes for coffee. _Shit,_ she thought. She'd woken up late, a little shaken by the unclear dream. Sean coughed nastily again as his baby cried in his arms. Another morning in paradise.

"You gonna stay home today, Seanny boy?" Maggie said, turning to his back, her coffee in hand. "Could kick that cough today and be back to work tomorrow."

"If I don't show up for my shift," he began after his coughing had subsided, a little louder than usual over the cries of his newly year old son. The baby had reached the big year mark only a month earlier. Sean kept his back to her, still facing the nearly fried eggs, "Then I don't get paid. Simple as that."

"We can go without one day of minimum wage. And what's your boss gonna say if you get all of them other moving guys sick?" she asked, and Sean began to actually consider staying home, then he could be back in one hundred percent condition. Maggie continued to push. "Better stay home, take of yourself and your son, typhoid Mary."

"Are you sure it's a good idea?" he questioned with raised red eyebrows, sliding his fried eggs onto a plate from the cabinet. Finn's yelling had quieted, and he rested his head against his father's shoulder, looking over at his aunt with glassy eyes.

"Yeah, why not? I can get an extra shift I think, considering everyone at work's been coming down with whatever it is you got," she told him and sipped her coffee. She glanced at her watch. _7:48_.

"Alright, fine," Sean said, strapping a dazed baby Finn into his high chair, then sitting down at the small round table with his plate of eggs. "But just for today."

"You might wanna be taking the baby to the doctor, he's had a fever for a straight three days," Maggie pointed out. "That's not so good."

Sean sighed, scratching at the slight bright red beard he'd grown over his freckled face. "How we gonna pay for that?"

"Don't worry about it. I'll pick this one up. I wear the pants in this household," she joked, putting her mug into the sink. When she looked back at the table, Sean was glaring at her sullenly. He was holding his head up with his right hand, too exhausted to fight back. Maggie held her hands up in surrender, a slight smirk on her face. "Even when we were little, you always turn into the devil when you're sick."

"You ain't seen the devil yet," he said grumpily, his voice hoarse.

Maggie kissed Finn quickly on his pudgy and flushed cheek, as the redhead baby lazily messed with the Honey Nut Cheerios on his high chair tray; she saved the kiss when she passed Sean and grabbed her keys off the counter.

"Bye, Seanny," she said as she slipped out the door, and her big brother grumbled in response.

They were six years apart, but sometimes it seemed like less. As children, their mother had died of a stroke. There wasn't much of a reason, one day she just had fallen down dead. Simple as that. Life's a bitch, huh? Maggie had been just five, and Sean at the tender age of eleven. It had been a hard few years, Maggie remembered them as she walked down the dull gray sidewalk that early June morning. The exchange with her brother had brought back memories of their earlier years. Their drunk Irish Catholic father had been no gentleman or scholar, he ran a failing car garage in a lot across the street from a little shopping center in the town of Murphy, North Carolina. Maggie MacNeil worked at a diner in that same little shopping center, all those years later. The thought of that old car garage, and the sight of it's abandoned remains every morning, always left a bitter taste in the back of her throat. It had been failing all her childhood, finally going under with the death of it's owner in 1986. Maggie had moved out of their little dusty house on the day of her eighteenth birthday. She'd dropped out of high school two months before graduation, but it was worth it to get away from the monster that had been her father. She'd gone to the funeral, and she'd been sad, but there was still a regrettable happiness within her. She hated herself for it.

As she walked past the abandoned lot that had been the garage, the gray brick building's walls littered with graffiti, she thought of a particularly traumatic childhood event. She had no idea what business she had with herself, stirring up all these bad feelings before work. But nonetheless, she couldn't escape the memory. She was sixteen, still two years from legal adulthood, and most don't turn into grownups until long after that legal deadline. But Maggie had always been a little beyond her years. The urine soaked smell of the lot with the chain link fence full of holes only intensified her recollection.

Her father had always worn his rings. Always. Even long after her mother was dead, he wore his wedding ring as well as an old fraternity ring he'd got off one of his drinking buddies who owned a pawn shop. The pawnshop was failing too. Big surprise, right? But those rings, on that night, became a staple of Maggie's childhood memories. It wasn't a big party, just a few of her friends getting together for a birthday. It went until around one o'clock in the morning, pretty standard for kids of that age. Then she walked home, and she should've been able to get into bed and go to sleep. But that wasn't how it worked. It never _really_ works that way, does it?

Maggie hadn't been drinking alcohol, but her father had. However, that didn't really come as a big shocker. She opened the rusty screen door of their old house on Green Street, it banged against her back as she searched for her key, rummaging through her handmade purse. She'd taken a sewing class the year before, and the purse was an item of which she'd been particularly proud. Much like the watch that she would sport years later, but for different reasons. She found the key and stuck it into the lock, breathing in the sweet, humid summer evening around her, and discovered that the door was already open. She walked in the door to the familiar kitchen, with the ugly green leaf wallpaper. It looked as if the MacNeil family had ivy crawling up the walls of their kitchen, as if the house were deserted and barren. A makeshift jungle which had long since succumbed to the will of the scavenging animals in their small town, but it was not so. Two people still lived in that house, but both their lives seemed just as insignificant as that old deserted house that the wallpaper reminded Maggie of.

Maggie saw the panting monster waiting for her on the other side of the door already, eagerly awaiting the violence and abuse that would follow. Monsters feed off of hate, and those monsters can hide inside costumes that are deceiving. But this particular monster that stood awaiting Maggie MacNeil on the other side of the door on that warm August evening, wore no mask or costume. One could look into the face of Seamus MacNeil and simply see, feel, the grotesque brutality that lurked beneath his skin, coursing through the dark, boiling blood in his veins. She crept through the door, hoping that monster would be asleep in his cave, but when she saw him standing next to the kitchen table, grease on his overalls and a half empty bottle of whiskey in his hand (whiskey neat-that was his drink), she knew there would be hell to pay.

"You were out past curfew, little girl," he growled incredulously, his heavy Irish accent much more evident when he was drunk.

"You've never set me a curfew, Dad," she said, shutting the door and turning to him. She looked down at herself, the scant brown tank top and jean shorts with black flipflops. It wasn't a particularly revealing outfit. But it showed a little more leg than she usually did. And Seamus MacNeil's girl would not be a whore; he would not be made a fool of. He could see her light blue bra strap sneaking out from beneath the strap of her tank top as she stood uncomfortably, her hair thrown into a ponytail, that blue and green patchwork purse slung over her right shoulder. She was a meek creature in that moment. But the shy little girl was about to be changed. After all, scar tissue is tougher than unscathed skin. He eyed her hungrily, drunkenly, savagely as she shifted her weight from foot to foot. The air had a tense silence that was disrupted only by the chirping of southern crickets outside.

"Well, you got a curfew now, little girl," he snarled, oil and sweat shining his bearded face in the ill-lit kitchen. "Were there boys at that party? Is that why you're dressed like a slut?"

"There were no boys, Daddy, I promise," she said, looking similar to the little girl of five she'd been when her mother had died. The long since yellowed wallpaper had been white then, between the green ivy leaves. In those memories everything was always brighter, light streamed through the windows, and perhaps there was laughter during those times? Maggie could never be sure if the laughter was just something she'd imagined. A white lie she used to trick herself into believing that there was ever a time when life was good. She suddenly became aware of her personal retrogression, and then made a conscious effort to stand straighter, stand taller, stand stronger. Then, she surprised even herself.

"I'm not dressed like a slut, Daddy."

He stormed towards her, the liquor sloshing around in the bottle as he went. She flinched, and he grinned wolfishly. In that moment, one couldn't distinguish the difference in him between man and animal. He smacked her hard across the face, the hand with his rings, his left hand. Left-handedness was a trait he had apparently passed down to his son, but they'd used those hands for very different purposes. He drew a little blood from her lip, and some tears pricked in the corners of her eyes.

"Not dressed like a slut?!" he bellowed, "The cheap hookers on the corner of Lincoln street dress better than you do!"

Maggie didn't respond, rubbing at her stinging cheek. She tried to remain composed; she wouldn't let herself cry. She'd had worse before. She tried to push past him, to just get down that dark hallway to her room where she could cry without shame. Well, there would still be some shame, but not as much. He put a greasy hand on her shoulder, calloused and rough. Maggie's stomach did a flip but she stood like a statue, turning her head to the left to look him right in his green eyes.

"Did you do things with the boys at that party?" He asked her gruffly, his Irish accent heavy. "Are you still pure? Did you make a fool out of me?"

"I didn't do anything, Daddy," she told him quietly, her voice was angered and soft, but tears were close. "I promise."

Then he snapped, squeezing the shoulder he still had his hand on roughly, pulling her back in front of him. They stood face to face. He was a big, tall man with a beer belly. His thinning red hair stood up wildly on his head. He was quite a few inches taller than her, and he blew hot, intoxicated breath into her face.

"Liar! I didn't raise you to be a liar! You are an embarrassment to this family!" he screamed. He punched her hard in the face with his ringed left hand, harder than he ever had before. He drew blood, oh yes, he drew a lot of blood. The size of his monster fist managed to blacken the corner of her right eye and his cheap fraternity ring tore a slash through the apple of her right cheek. A relatively small cut, actually, but a deep one. It bled like the dickens for a while after.

Pain exploded on the right side of her face, but for the moment, Maggie remained relatively numb. The white hot, blinding rage that filled her was far too strong, and it overrode the pain. They both stood in the silence of the thick air for a moment.

"You did things with those boys, didn't you?" he whispered angrily. "Let me check to see if you're still pure. If you're gonna bring shame to this family. I know how to do it."

Maggie was horrified at the proposal, her stomach twisted and she could practically hear nails on a chalkboard thinking about her own father checking the status of her virginity. Which, by the way, she still had, but that was none of his goddam business. He made a move to grab her, but she turned and ran out the door. He managed to grasp a small lock of her hair and rip a couple pieces as she sprinted out into their brown and crunchy front yard, but that was all he managed to do. Besides, of course, her split lip, black eye, and the cut on her cheek. She ran down the street and past the stop sign. Then, she turned left and ran towards town. Maggie didn't stop running until she reached the next stop sign, where the dusty gravel road turned to pavement.

She could taste the blood in the back of her throat as the breath heaved hurriedly in and out of her lungs, trying to catch itself. She sat on the side of the road with her elbows on her knees, her heart thudding rapidly in her ears. She didn't know what to do and where to go, certainly not back to her own house where the monster/potential rapist was sure to be waiting for her. Then, something occurred to her. Before she knew it, she was positive that the monster would follow her down here. He would put his big, grimy hand over her mouth and drag her into the woods. He would rip open the button of her shorts and check if she was still pure. She held these images in her mind as she stood up again, speed walking down the road and then down the next and then the next. Sick to her stomach, and her blood pumping viciously. She walked for a long time that night, maybe four hours, more or less. It was only three or four miles to her brother's apartment building, but to Maggie, on that night, it felt like a hundred. The sun was beginning to rise when she finally reached Sean's homefront. She remembered the salvation she felt when she finally arrived at that dirty little apartment complex near the shopping center. The town of Murphy was very small, only with around 2,000 people. Nobody lived more than a few miles apart. This had many pros and cons, one could feel close with their neighbors and everybody knew everybody. However, one could feel like they were suffocating, and everybody knew everybody's business.

She heard yelling from the apartment below that of her older brother and his girlfriend, as well as the barks and howls of a mean sounding dog. Maggie's tired legs managed to get her trudging up the , wooden stairs with many opportunities for a splinter. Maggie's light reddish brown hair was greasy from her long night in the sweaty air, and the dried blood was caked around the cut on her cheek, which would eventually scar. But, only noticeable up close. Meanwhile, her black eye was beginning to turn that pale bluish-purplish that all fresh bruises sport. She knocked on the door, a hazy summer hum filling the early morning. When the door opened, she expected to see a sleepy Sean, a bright red fuzz of bread on his newly wakened face. His facial hair had always grown fast. But instead, it was Missy who came to the door.

She was wearing one of Sean's hockey jerseys, and it fit her like a tent. Her dark brown, almost black curls fell below her shoulder blades, and it was unruly from sleep. She had pale olive skin, and warm hazel eyes. She was just a little thing, short, around 5 feet 2 inches, but she was slightly curvy. This unlike Maggie, who stood five inches taller than Missy, but was dangerously thin most of the time. Waif was practically Maggie's middle name.

Words couldn't really describe the way Sean loved Missy. It wasn't as though they had some grand, epic love story. They met in high school, they liked each other, eventually they fell in love. And then after they graduated, they moved in together. The end. At this point they'd been living together for around four years. Unbeknownst to everyone, Sean was planning to soon propose. It was a quiet love, a slow love. But a good love, still.

Though, when Sean had announced to his father that he was in love with an Italian girl from New Jersey, the news had not been taken as well as hoped. So, that was part of the reason why Sean had moved out the day after graduating high school. The other reason, of course, was the drunken beatings. As he'd grown older, and stronger over the years, he'd been able to escape the abuse sessions. And he'd been able to save Maggie a few times, but other times there was just nothing he could do. Then, she was alone. But Sean and Missy were living in relative bliss, and Maggie was happy for them. Seamus MacNeil, however, was not very happy for his son. They hadn't spoken since he'd moved out, and by that night, it had been four years.

"Hey, Maggie?" Missy said sleepily, yawning into her fist, "What are you doing here so early?" She looked up. "Oh my god! What happened?"

Maggie didn't say anything. She just burst into tears, she'd been holding it in the whole walk there. An owl hooted in the distance, and Missy enveloped Maggie in a hug, shushing her quietly.

"It's okay...shhh...it's okay." Missy led Maggie into the tiny apartment and shut the door behind her. She took the tall girl and sat her down on the green couch in the small living room. There was a battered wooden table in the middle of the imitation oriental rug, and a cabinet full of VHS tapes with a little box TV opposite the couch. It was a little cozy, but it was certainly a home. A real one, with a lot of love to fill it. That was more than Maggie could say.

That night, Missy bandaged Maggie up as she explained what had happened. Sean paced on the rug in front of them, clad in only a t-shirt and boxer shorts, his anger steadily mounting and then coming to a climax at the point when Maggie told him their father had punched her. She did, however, leave out the part about her father checking the status of her virginity. She left that part out for a long time, it would be three years before she told someone about that particular detail of the story, and that someone was Missy.

"You can't live in that house anymore, Maggie!" Sean seethed, turning towards his girlfriend and his baby sister as they sat together on the couch. The both looked up at him with fearful eyes. Missy's arm was around Maggie, who was shaking violently with her chin held up by her hands. It had been a very tiring night for her. "That's enough! That asshole shouldn't get to throw you around like that!"

"Sean, stop yelling!" Missy exclaimed, she had a heavy New Jersey accent. "It's not like it's anyone here's fault. So, just sit down!" Sean hesitantly obeyed, sitting down in the old rocking chair near the couch. He drummed his fingers on the arms restlessly.

Maggie leaned back against the couch, her hands fidgeting in her lap as she tried to stop shaking. When she spoke, she spoke slowly, her voice was tired and weary. It was the same, deep, smoky, but feminine voice that she always spoke with. A voice far different from the one she had used when recounting that night's tale of woe, tearfully and cracked. But in a way, the voice she used now scared Missy and Sean more than that other voice had. It was a voice that was far too old to belong to someone who had only lived for sixteen years. It was a voice like a late autumn wind through the dry, brown leaves of a hundred year old oak tree. "Seanny, I only have two more years until I turn eighteen. I'll move out on the day I'm old enough. But, for now, it's okay."

"No!" he yelled, but then quickly regretted it as his girlfriend shot him an angry look. He put his elbows on his knees. "No, it's not okay," he spoke softer this time, "You can't stay in that house, it's not safe there."

"It's not safe anywhere, Seanny boy," Maggie smirked in spite of her fatigue. "Anyone who tells you different is selling something."

"Maggie, it's not funny," Missy said. "You can't live with someone who hurts you."

Maggie knew she was right, but her adolescent confidence and sense of revenge got the best of her. As well as the fear that something really bad would happen to her if she moved out. She knew logically that her own father wouldn't kill her, he surely didn't have the balls for that, but still, she wondered.

"It's not like I can just move out. One: he's my legal guardian until I'm eighteen. Two: I wouldn't have any place to live. And three: I'm not gonna just run away. I shouldn't've run away tonight, I should've just stood up to him. Maybe if I finally do, all of this will stop."

"You could stay with us. We've got that extra room," Missy chose to address the second issue Maggie had brought up, instead of the more complicated third. She gestured to the small spare bedroom across from the master. Well, not that you could really call it a master. Their junky queen-sized bed took up practically the whole room.

"You know what?" Sean said, standing up, his anger had been brewing internally again for the past couple minutes. "I should just go kill the bastard and that would solve all of our problems," he said cheerily and then turned towards the small kitchen, with a hallways to it's left which led to the front door.

"Sean!" Missy exclaimed, she jumped up and grabbed him roughly by the arm, staring him down even though he stood about a foot taller than her. "Go and sit down on the fucking couch next to your sister and we'll talk about this rationally." Once again, Sean made the wise choice to obey her.

They talked for around another hour, both Sean and Missy still trying to convince Maggie that she needed to get out of that house. But, she refused. She'd always been a stubborn girl. She continued to argue that she didn't want to run away from her problems, she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of her fear. He _did_ scare her, of course. Both by his great height (he stood at around six and a half feet tall), and by his monstrous behavior. But, after that night, she would always fight back. She usually got away relatively unscathed, with a few rare exceptions. After all that attempted convincing, Maggie pointed out firstly that both Missy and Sean needed to get ready for work, and that it was her life, and they couldn't tell her what to do. That was when Seanny and Missy knew that their efforts would ultimately be fruitless. There was nothing that could stand between a teenager and their theoretical future.

Maggie went back to the house that afternoon, but not before she'd slept for a few hours on that old green couch. In Maggie's opinion, that couch was ugly as hell, but it sure was comfortable. And she knew that Missy and Sean had almost certainly picked that couch up from the dump on the edge of town. Things sure were cheap there. After that day, Maggie continued to live in the house with her father, but they hardly ever saw each other. Maggie would go to school in the day, and usually spend the evenings at Sean and Missy's house. Then, she would come home to sleep, and the cycle would repeat the next day. During the summers she would leave the house with a book in her hand every morning, go read it at Sean and Missy's all day, and then come back to sleep just as she did during the school year. Sean and Missy were more than happy for her to stay at their house, they only wished that she didn't go back to her father's house every night. There was always that slight possibility that Maggie would show up the next day with a scratch or a handprint on her cheek, bruises on her arms, the purple outline of fingertips on her shoulders from where he had grabbed her. Or, their worst fear, that she wouldn't show up at all. This never happened, but it was always a lingering, whispering fear in the back of Sean and Missy's minds.

For the next two years, that was how things went. Maggie and her father hardly ever talked, and Seamus had taken to picking up night shifts at the car garage. Or, sleeping on the cot in his office. There were only a few unlucky nights when Maggie would run into the drunken monster that had put the scar on her cheek that one night during the summer when she was sixteen.

A year after that summer, Sean had proposed to Missy. And she, obviously, had said yes. She wore the small silver ring with the little, tiny, micro diamond embedded in it. She wore it everyday, she wore it with pride. Her own parents had been in love the way she and Sean were, like two pieces of a puzzle that could never be taken apart once they were put together. But, her parents had died when she was around fourteen. Plane crash. They were on the way back to New Jersey from a funeral in Florida. A family friend that Missy had never known, there was no reason for her to go. She was staying at a friend's house that weekend. There was a thunderstorm and the pilots couldn't see, an engine went out, and that was it. Bad luck, Missy told herself, just bad luck. But, for whatever reason, as children who've lost their parents often do, she felt that she was in some way responsible. Maybe if she _had_ gone to Florida, they would've missed their flight back, or would've had a different flight or something. Just something that would have thrown off that perfect course of events that had led to her parents burning up on that fiery plane when it landed in a field in South Carolina and exploded. But, she had come to live with an aunt in North Carolina, and she had met the love of her life. A perfect course of events, huh?

Maggie moved in with Missy and Sean on April 12th, 1985. It was a quick and easy thing, it hadn't felt as life changing as Maggie thought it would. She had been packing slowly, putting things in boxes every now and again for about three months, until finally the day came when she took her ten boxes, packed them into Sean's car, and left. Her father hadn't seen her leave, of course, he'd been working in the garage that Saturday. But Maggie often wondered if he ever even knew she'd moved out. It wouldn't have been much different for Seamus MacNeil if his daughter was living with him or not. Perhaps, Maggie had thought as she was sitting on her twin bed the night after she'd moved in, he thought she'd moved out that night when his ring cut her cheek. She tried to remember a time since that night when he'd seen her without alcohol in his system. And she couldn't think of a single one. He probably didn't remember any of what he did when he was drunk, so when was the last time he'd seen her or remembered her at all? Maggie never exactly figured it out. She couldn't even remember the last words she ever said to him. But, she decided to put him behind her. And for about a year and a half, until she heard from some of the people in town that he had died of cirrhosis of the liver, she hardly thought about him at all.

Even when she heard of his death, the news was surprisingly painless. It was not the death of a man, but the death of a monster and a myth. When she told Sean and Missy, who had been married for around three months at that point, that Seamus had died, Maggie had insisted they hold him a funeral. This was much to Sean's protest, but Missy had agreed. And so, with a vote of 2-1, they gave Seamus MacNeil a small funeral three days later. It wasn't hard to arrange, nothing really is in a town as small as Murphy. Not many people attended. Besides Sean, Missy, Maggie, and Seamus' poker buddies. Along with a few employees of the car garage, who, by the way, were out of a job. Seamus didn't have a will, and he had around three hundred dollars in his bank account, which was used to pay for his funeral and small headstone, which only beared his name and the years he had lived. No one could think of anything else that was appropriate to write on the headstone of such a man as Seamus MacNeil. They buried him next to his wife. Though to lay the monster to rest next to such a kind soul seemed like a colossal travesty, there was nowhere else to put him. And they had, of course, loved each other. Or, at least, Maggie thought she remembered them loving each other. But in the end, she really wasn't sure.

So, the lot with the old car garage was abandoned, and the remaining MacNeils (Missy now included as she had taken Sean's name after their marriage she was, legally, Melissa Denton MacNeil) continued to live life as normal. Death does not stop the world from turning. Missy, at the time of Seamus' death was already two months pregnant with her and Sean's first child. They'd started making babies early into their marriage. Maggie knew, of course. The walls of the apartment were very thin. Maggie had begun waitressing at the Ace of Hearts Diner a few weeks after she'd moved in with the couple. They'd told her that she could continue high school if she wanted, that it was even a good idea. But Maggie disagreed. She wanted to save up enough money to get a place of her own, or to at least contribute to the household and stop mooching off of Sean and Missy. And when Missy pointed out that Maggie had kind of been mooching off of them for a couple years already, Maggie had simply said that it was neither here nor there, and the conversation was ended. She actually did get her credits together and got her GED three years later, at the age of twenty one. It had only taken three months off of work, and she had saved enough money by then to take half her normal hours and still manage to support herself in the shoebox apartment she'd started renting for herself about six months earlier.

But, if she looked back on her life, she would've said that the year and a half that she'd lived with Sean and Missy was the happiest time in her years. Baby Colleen had arrived seven months after they'd held the funeral of old Seamus MacNeil, about three weeks after Maggie's nineteenth birthday. Maggie thought about those good times in her old room, with the young family right across the hall, as she walked by the car garage in June 1990. She went straight into the diner, the bell dinging over the door as she walked in. Five minutes late.

 **Author's Note:** Story is already finished and will be updated every Saturday. Thank you to all those who read. Please note that we will be seeing our favorite characters from _The Stand_ appear shortly, just a bit of backstory first. Ah, tension. Don't you love it? Anyway, thank you so much for reading and PLEASE review.

Peace and love.


	2. Chapter Two

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part One:** _June 1990_

 **Chapter Two**

It was an odd day. No, that was an understatement, it was a crazy day. Almost all the cooks had called in sick; only two left. And only three waitresses. Not to mention that, besides Maggie, everyone who had shown up for work appeared to be getting the bad cold that was ravaging its way through town. The bossman was out sick too, and so were the customers. Most of the day Maggie and the two other waitresses just sat on those ugly red bar stools, listening about the ever worsening flu epidemic as told by the local and national radio extraordinaires. That was when Maggie got scared, her mind flashed back to Sean and Finn this morning, and those nasty coughs. Did they have the flu? She thought it was just a cold, but the radio said that some babies were dying from it. She really hoped that Sean had chosen to take the baby to the doctor like she'd told him to.

There was an eternity between the beginning of her shift and her lunch hour, but Maggie eventually made it there. She usually just ate her lunch in the back room of the diner, but today that would've just been depressing. Cordelia, her usual lunch friend, was out sick today. Along with Jane and Rosie. The two other waitresses, Lena and Jennifer, were bitches. Maggie was a pretty young thing, still with some life and potential left in her. Maybe one day she'd even leave the diner, maybe she wouldn't be stuck in the vortex of small town America. But Lena and Jennifer knew they would be, so naturally, they tried to passive aggressively drag Maggie down with them. The two middle aged women were freely smoking cigarettes right in the middle of the restaurant as Maggie grabbed her purse off the rack and prepared to leave for lunch.

"Where you goin' hon?" Lena asked politely, smiling a little, and showing the dusty rose colored lipstick on her teeth.

"You feelin' sick too? Lord knows I've got a helluva cough, maybe a fever too. But I'm not one to cut out," Jennifer said raspily, smoke sneaking out of her mouth. The smell of their menthol cigarettes was potent and putrid, but it was nowhere near the odor of the cheap cigars and Pall Malls Maggie's late father had smoked. That smell made her feel sick to her stomach.

"Why, no, ladies. As a matter of fact I'm feelin' just peachy," Maggie said. "Hope y'all feel better though." She tried her hardest at a smile but it was more like a grimace.

"Maybe I'll take tomorrow off, God knows I've earned it," Lena said and sniffed; her nose was a fountain. "Just you wait, honey, soon it'll be that you've been workin' here for thirty years. And all you'll have to show for it is a broken heart over one of the cooks, and a case of the clap from the other!"

They both guffawed together and Maggie continued with her poor excuse for a smile.

"Well, bless y'all's hearts. I sure hope you feel better.", Maggie said and both their laughter faded. In southern terms, Maggie had just called them stupid. "I'll be back in an hour. That okay?"

"Oh of course honey, but what will we do without your knowledge and great presence?" Lena said, her eyebrows peaked, with an incredulous tone.

"I'm not sure, I suppose y'all will just have to figure it out," Maggie said with a sly smirk, and swept out the door; the bell perched over it gave an uncommonly loud ding in the nearly deserted restaurant.

. . .

Birds chirped pleasantly in the park, and Maggie MacNeil sat solemnly on an old wooden bench. It was a nice day, Maggie planned on taking advantage of the beautiful summer during lunch breaks in the future. She took her peanut butter sandwich, complete with the Wonder bread, out of the ziplock bag. She never put jelly on those sandwiches. Peanut butter and jelly was the kind of sandwich her mother had given them everyday at noon, or in their lunches for school. The jelly would turn the bread soggy and mushy and gray.

Maggie loved North Carolina summers, when there were always bug sounds and palpable heat in the air. And, just the smell of the air was better put in a small town, away from the big cities like Raleigh and Charlotte. The Queen City, they called it, but it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Just full of tired people, tired of working at their tiring jobs, and tired still for the noise and the traffic and the lost sleep. Everyone in a small town like Murphy was always relatively well-rested, perhaps a bit bored, but well-rested. Time moved slower there, and everybody knew everybody.

The park bench on which Maggie sat was covered and scratched with graffiti including such gems as _Jimmy can't get it up,_ and, _Laura better run._ The latter of the two etchings sent a chill down Maggie's spine, but it looked as though it had been impressed into the wood at least ten years ago. The matter had, most likely, been dealt with. Looking down at that seeming threat in that moment would be the last of seeming normalcy in the life of Maggie MacNeil. When she looked up, she saw a large military vehicle driving leisurely down Twister Drive.

. . .

The sirens started at 12:34. Maggie was still sitting on her bench, finishing up the last of her peanut butter sandwich; she always ate the bottom corners last. With the Wonder bread crumbs sticking in between her back molars and the pink skin inside her cheek, the birds had been chirping and cicadas buzzing. Most people in the south preferred the sound of the crickets, but the cicadas had always been Maggie's favorite. It was a warmer, softer sound than that of the intrusive crickets. The buzzing of the cicadas reminded one of a hazy, delirious summer afternoon, when the smell of the barbeque wafted through the air. But only that of the tangy, vinegary, North Carolina barbeque. None of that sugary shit from down in the deep south; Lexington style barbeque was the only way to go. Maggie was thinking about the odd sense of competition the Southern states had over their barbeque when the blaring sirens began. It had been only a few minutes since she'd seen the military vehicle cruising down the street in front of her, but she hadn't thought too much of it. North Carolina was something of a military state, what with the nearby camps of LeJeune and Fort Bragg. She'd figured that'd had something to do with the uninvited vehicle surveying the little Appalachian town.

Sounds of the animals around Maggie were drowned out and there was nothing but that high, whining sound overpowering her. She looked around, searching for someone who might know what was going on. But there was no one; the innocent bystanders were all out sick. Her eyes went wide and mouth dry, it was still a sunny day, but the pleasant state of the weather seemed to feel out of place with that vile sound interrupting the humid air. Maggie didn't really know what to do, and for a foolish moment she thought, _Does this happen every afternoon at the park?_ Once she registered her own thought, she felt silly, but it was true that she hardly ever ate lunch there. Perhaps it was a new procedure, but there would be no reason for it.

Then, the more logical thought hit her, _We've gone to war again._ She remembered the videos she'd been shown in the early days of her public education, when the country had still been in the last squeezing grasp of the Vietnam War. It was to show what to do if the country was suddenly being bombed, the air raid sirens would scream and shout in the air and the narrator of the video would say, " _DUCK AND COVER!"_ Obviously, in a real life situation this would do no good, a boy in the video took the blanket that his quaint little family had been using for their picnic and cover himself with it. As if an atomic bomb would be stopped by the quilt that Aunt Mabel had given to your mother as a gift three birthdays ago.

But in that moment Maggie could think of nothing else. Right before she was about to crawl underneath the small park bench, (her tall but waifish figure would have probably fit quite comfortably), the sirens stopped. And there was silence. Not even the cicadas buzzed.

. . .

Maggie had run home straight from the park, noticing how few familiar faces she past in the street. Some were hidden behind gas masks, and most that she did recognize were horribly pale and sickly. It was bad, Maggie knew it was bad. And her brother and the baby were both sick. The military people were there, most swarmed around the local medical center, but Maggie didn't know what their business was.

She arrived at the apartment, burst through the door and immediately ran into the Sean's bedroom, which doubled as the nursery. She surveyed the room, noticing the smell of sweat and spit up that was lingering in the air. Sean sat on the bed with the baby over his shoulder, the burp cloth soaked with vomit. The baby was asleep, his head resting on Sean's muscular shoulder. Sean too, was dozing, his fevered cheeks slightly slicked with sweat. Maggie felt his forehead; burning up. She took the baby off his shoulder, waking him slightly. She transferred his heated head to her own right arm and shook Sean with the other. She wondered dimly how long they'd been there, it'd only been a few hours since she'd left, but both their conditions seemed to have rapidly deteriorated since then.

"SEAN! GET THE FUCK UP!" Maggie, who had the nasty habit of swearing when she got nervous, shouted. And boy was she nervous now. The baby stirred on a little in his delirious state, and Maggie noticed the congested, rattling sound in his chest. Sean however, snapped his eyes open and was suddenly awake.

"Maggie? Why aren't you at work?" he asked dazedly, still half-asleep, "I was...gonna take the baby to the doctor later. But I guess I fell asleep. What time is it? Did I miss the appointment?"

All this came faster and faster as he crawled his way out of sleep. By the end he was hardly delirious anymore. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his right wrist.

"Okay. Okay. Okay," Maggie said, her hands shaking. She took a deep breath and the baby started to cough. It was an ugly, desperate sound originating deep in his chest.

"Here, Seanny boy. Take your son, we're gonna go to the hospital. Where are the fucking keys?" She said as she thrust the still coughing baby toward her ginger-haired brother, who took the baby on his shoulder and patted his back until he coughed a yellow wad of phlegm up onto the already filthy burp cloth.

"In the bowl by the front door," Sean said hurriedly. And in a flash, they were out the door. Down to the deserted parking lot, they hopped into the '73 Ford F250 with the chipping silver paint. Only one other car passed the MacNeils on their way to the Murphy Medical Center.

 **Author's Note:** Well, Captain Trips is officially underway. Still none of our favorite characters yet, but we're getting there. Thank you so much for reading, and I'm hoping you liked it! This chapter is shorter but chapter three will be going up a little earlier. ;)

Anyway, PLEASE review and rate. Thank you again!

Peace and love.


	3. Chapter Three

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part One:** _June 1990_

 **Chapter Three**

Finn lasted two days before he finally drowned in his own phlegm on the morning of June 23, 1990. Maggie was disgusted, it was a grotesque and insulting way for such an innocent soul to die. Sean, who had continued to ail, but seemed to be getting better since his baby son had died, sobbed for hours and hours as his little sister had her hand over his shoulder. Maggie did not cry. She did feel devastatingly sad, but she also felt overwhelming anger. Why had her brother had to lose so much? Why did she? Why was everyone dying? At that point, there were no answers to any of those questions, and it was the not knowing that had Maggie enraged. But after just fuming on the inside for six hours after Finn's death, Maggie decided she would go crazy if she continued to question such things.

And by then, there were other things to worry about. The hospital was a zoo. There were sick people everywhere, beds filled the halls and the usual mechanical smell of the medical center was overpowered by a bigger, badder smell. The smell of death and misery. Maggie saw crying relatives everywhere too, most of them looking near death as well. Maggie couldn't sleep there, or at least, not much. And not at all for a little while after the baby died. And the sleep she did get was in short intervals, always filled with cloudy visions of the same dream, but never clear enough to decipher. It seemed like the world was literally falling apart, and Maggie knew it was when the doctor who had been treating Finn came into the packed waiting room to tell them he was dead. The doctor, Bowden, also had the superflu. The doctors were getting sick, so order was collapsing. There was no one to turn to for treatment.

Maggie drove the car, and Sean sat in the passenger seat, and they were silent. The small body of Finn Murphy lay in the back seat, wrapped in a gauzy white hospital sheet. First, they took the body of what had been a happy, healthy baby a week ago (just starting to walk and talk) home. Surprise, surprise, the local mortician was dead. How cruel is that irony? So, they drove the body out to the park. It had a small pond with ducks, when they were children their mother had often brought them down to the pond and let them feed the ducks with chunks off a loaf of cheap bread. And Missy had likewise taken little Colleen, and later an infant Finn, to feed the ducks, with Sean often accompanying them. There was a hill by the pond, on top of which sat an old park bench with intricately designed iron arms and legs, with many a lover's names scratched into hearts of varying sizes. They climbed the hill slowly in the humid air of a North Carolina morning. Maggie dug and Sean sat, the sheet still covering the body he held limply in his arms.

. . .

That night, Maggie laid awake for hours, listening to the drowning cough coming from Sean's room. He was sobbing and coughing, and, as Maggie well knew, he was dying. Reports were scattering in on the radio, from the fact that "Captain Trips does not exist," to the government burning bodies in Pennsylvania and California. But Maggie knew it had to be true, the hospital had been the ultimate truth. She thought about how many people she had seen die in just the past two days, and she shivered underneath her old yellow comforter. She didn't cry that night, and she still hadn't since the baby had died. It all still seemed like one big bad dream, and she felt numb to it. She was still slightly holding on to the idea that she would wake up on the morning of June 20th, the baby would still be alive. They would both be sick but it would just be a cold, they would be getting better.

But she heard the cough and crying coming from Sean's bedroom, and she knew that hope was dim. It was real. It was happening. The world was that dismal thought, and after nearly 40 hours awake, she fell asleep.

. . .

The first thing that struck Maggie was the odd way the light was shining through the corn. It didn't seem to be day or night, or any time for that matter. A golden shimmer was shining through the hazy sky, but it was somehow dark there, there was no sun or moon. The air was warm but not sweltering, and Maggie could smell that she was in the country. She was dazed by the beautiful vision of the sky and smell of the air for a moment before she realized where she was. Lying in a field of corn.

She bolted to sit upright, her reddish hair falling on her right shoulder. She still wore the grey tank top and black yoga pants she'd had on in bed, and she could still slightly taste the Crest Pro-Health toothpaste she'd used in her mouth. Then she got the feeling; someone was watching her. She felt as though someone were crouching behind her, breathing the slightest breath on the nape of her neck. She got up and ran, and as she was running, she started to hear a guitar, and a voice as old as time.

"He walks with me, and he talks with me…" the voice sang.

Her legs pumped viciously towards the voice, away from the creeping feeling of dread. She had felt it at the hospital unknowingly, but now she certainly knew it was there. The sweet country air blew in and out of her lungs as she raced through the corn, and she suddenly popped out of the corn and into a clearing. There was an old house propped up on jack knives, and a leathery old black woman on the porch, playing the hymn on her pretty old guitar. Maggie liked guitars, her childhood best friend had played one, and she'd actually started learning herself. But then high school ended and everyone left to chase better things, but Maggie remained in Murphy. Her best friend, Grace, had, oddly enough, been deaf. But she'd loved the way the vibrations felt against her body. Maggie always smiled when she'd remembered the way she would close her bright green eyes, her dark hair falling around her face, strumming that old Gibson.

Maggie snapped back out of her memories as she neared the steps on the porch of the house. The old woman in the armless rocking chair finished her song, and Maggie smiled a wide smile.

"Excuse me, m'am?" she asked, feeling an overwhelming sense of warmth and love practically radiating off of the old woman; she felt comfortable. "But, where am I?"

"Why, my child, you're in Hemingford Home," the old woman said kindly.

"Who are you m'am?" Maggie asked.

"My name's Abigail Freemantle. But folks 'round here just call me Mother Abigail," the old woman said. "I'm one hundred and eight years old, and I still make my own biscuits."

At this, Maggie just smiled.

"Maggie," Mother Abigail began. Maggie was confused at how the old woman knew her name but she kept quiet, "He's gonna be coming soon. So you got to come see me; you and all your friends."

"Who's coming?" Maggie asked, furrowing her brows, but she could feel the answer before Mother Abagail said anything.

"He is," Mother Abigail said solemnly, pointing into the corn. Maggie turned and saw it, the red eyes peering through the corn. The face of what had been chasing her.

( _You ain't seen the devil yet.)_

Suddenly, the golden shimmer went dark and thunder rolled through the country sky. Maggie turned helplessly back to Mother Abigail, then she noticed the weasels pooling and crawling around her feet. She gasped in horror, but felt as though she was unable to scream.

"The weasels are his," Mother Abigail said. Maggie awoke with a sheen of cold sweat on her face and her body shaking.

. . .

The days are long when everyone is dying or dead. The town was becoming rapidly less populated, and virtually all of the soldiers and civilians were sick. Except Maggie. People had stopped going to the hospital to die, but the soldiers who could still walk were starting to burn the bodies that had been left at the deserted medical facility. Putrid, decayed smoke polluted the hazy late June air, and Maggie's stomach threatened gagging almost every time she stepped outside. Not that she went outside much anyway, Sean was slowly getting worse, and going outside meant gunshots and fires. One would have never thought there were so many looters in a small town like Murphy.

Maggie knew she was just waiting for Sean to die, but she wasn't sure what there was to wait for. What was she going to do next? She still expected that she would come down with Captain Tripps at some point. Soon she would start to rasp and drown and cough, maybe she and Sean would die together. That would be nice, wouldn't it? She thought about this often, the dying. What it would be like afterwards. Would she ever see baby Finn again, or their mother? Or their _father?_ That was a rather scary thought ( _Laura better run)_ , she thought about that on the night of June 25, 1990. She could still hear the crickets outside the window as she sat in a ratty old leather armchair next to Sean's bed, he was no longer violently coughing but just breathing shallowly. Maggie didn't know it that was a good sign or a bad one. Her head rested on the back of the chair, her neck craned so she was staring right up at the ceiling, her hair in a French braid. She had thought about sleeping in her own room, but decided against it, she wanted to keep an eye on Sean in case he took a turn for the worst, if this wasn't the worst already.

Eventually, Maggie drifted off to sleep, and she dreamed. But it was far different from the one she'd had the previous night. She was at the old house on Green Street with the rusty screen door, she could almost smell the booze from outside. She looked down and saw what she was wearing: the brown tank top, the jean shorts, the black flip flops. Complete with the patchwork purse on one shoulder and a light blue bra strap peeking out from beneath her brown shirt on the other shoulder. Then she felt it again, the white blond hairs on the back of her back stood up at that feeling. She was on the porch still, outside the door, she didn't want to meet whatever was waiting for her on the other side. A crow squawked somewhere in the North Carolina pines up above, and the monster on burst through the door and the world seemed to lose sound for a moment. Maggie saw her father alive for the first time in a long time, but now he had red eyes and a voice that Maggie didn't think could exist. She knew instantly it was the voice of a demon.

"Is that why you're dressed like a slut?!" it growled incredulously in its monstrous voice. The eyes were probably the worst part, she could feel like almost reading her thoughts. As in the dream the previous night, she ran again, and the weasels followed her. They chased her too, following her as she ran down the familiar dirt road and her breath wheezed in and out of her lungs. Soon, the wolves and the weasels were trailing her, the road was endless, and the pines running on either side of her were dark and looming, perhaps they had red eyes too. And sharp teeth.

"Let me see if you're still pure! Did you make a fool out of me?" she heard the voice scream behind her, closer than she thought, the hairs once again stood straight up on the back of her neck. Her chest rose and fell quickly, her feet, toes painted purple, hit against the smooth, cool dirt again and again as she continued to run to nowhere.

( _Nowhere man don't hurry, take your time, and don't worry)_

The road kept going and going, Maggie had no idea how long she'd been running. She had the vivid semi-consciousness of a nightmare, and she couldn't exactly tell whether or not she knew it was a dream. Then, the wolves beginning to growl, two figures, one tiny and one small, hand in hand, appeared right in front of Maggie, practically out of nowhere. She had almost no time to see who they were in the pale moonlight before she thought she would hit them. But when she saw who it was, she stopped dead in her tracks, surprising herself, the weasels, and the wolves alike. It was Missy and Colleen. Their bodies were caked with dirt, faces bruised and bloody, and their clothes were not much but rags. Maggie noticed with disgust that there was a tire track running across the front of Colleen's green gingham dress. She looked at the little girl, perpetually two and a half, her red mass of curls and bowed mouth, but she lacked the big brown eyes, Missy's eyes. There were black holes where they should've been. A maggot peaked its head out of the left nostril of Colleen's button nose.

"You could have saved us." Missy said in that same demon voice that had belonged to her father( _?_ ) when she had started running from the house at Green Street. Maggie awoke with a jolt and a small gasp. She let her head fall back on the chair, hitting it with a dull _thud_. She rubbed at her eyes and tried to forget it, all of it. The dream, the flu, the baby, Colleen, Missy, Sean, her father, her mother: all of it. She wanted a do-over. An owl hooted somewhere and Maggie opened her eyes. She sat for some time watching sweat roll down Sean's face as he slept (despite the ibuprofen she'd given him before bed, the fever didn't seem to be going down at all), listening to the rattling in his chest. And the owl continued to hoot all night long.

. . .

Sean Carrick MacNeil's funeral was held at 1:43 am on the morning of June 27, 1990. There was only one guest in attendance. Maggie didn't really know what to do when Sean's drowning breath ceased. She said thought of going to the park and burying him next to his baby, but she didn't want to face the possible looters...or others with the same morals but different intentions. But, then again, she didn't know if there was even anyone left in the town besides her. Or the world, for that matter. But then she thought better of it, there was no reason for her to be the only one left alive, she was nothing special. She sat contemplating her options for around two hours after Sean had died at noon on June 26. The two hours before he had died he'd been practically unbearable, the fever had made him delirious and he was yelling about Missy and Finn and Colleen for a long time. And about their mother.

"That pig bitch left us with Dad. She left us alone, you were so little Maggie," he had said when he had still been coherent enough to know who he was talking to. After a while, he had started talking to Missy. He said many things, calling her beautiful and perfect and telling her how much he missed her. He talked about their kids and what life they could've had.

"But then I heard the bells ringing," were the last words Sean had said, not really talking about anything or to anyone at that point. Maggie didn't cry, she just felt kind of numb, just like she had right after baby Finn's heart had stopped beating.

At around two o'clock though, Maggie decided to stop thinking about everything. And then she did a peculiar thing: the laundry. There were quite a bit of clothes that needed washing, especially with the baby spitting up so much when he was sick and all. Maggie left Sean in his gray t-shirt and red pajama pants, tucking him under the black and yellow, dingy floral comforter, and took his dirty laundry to the little hall closet in between the bathroom and her own bedroom. It had a rusty washer and dryer in it, a big selling point for Sean and Maggie when they'd started renting the place back in November of 1989. That seemed like centuries ago to Maggie now. She put all of it into the barrel of the white washing machine, poured in some blue Tide, and pressed the button. She pulled a kitchen chair into the hallway in front of the washing machine, and she watched it run. That took about an hour, then she switched it, and ran the dryer. When the dryer dinged, another hour had passed, and Maggie had still not cried. Maybe it didn't seem real yet, but who knows. She hadn't really thought about anything while the laundry was running, and she still didn't know what to do with the body of her big brother.

She folded the laundry and put it in a basket, and placed it neatly in a corner of Sean's room, his body still lying in the bed. She grabbed a box of raisin bran from the top of the fridge, sat on the couch cross-legged, and munched on her dinner of dry cereal. That's when the lights went out. Only the evening glow was there to light the dull apartment walls, but Maggie just continued to eat the cereal, and listened to an owl hoot outside the windows once again. _Well_ , she thought, _that's it._

And with that simple thought, she started to cry, as well as scream. She threw her white Corelle plate across the room, and it shattered into a lot of tiny pieces against the eggshell colored wall. She put her head in her hands and wept, her body shook with the force of her cries, as though she were hollow. She felt hollow anyway. Everyone was just gone, or at least presumably so. Maggie cried until five o'clock, until her eyes were rimmed with red and she had pink blotches around her eyes. She was breathing shallowly and she felt slightly nauseated. After she cried, she was exhausted, so she went to lay down in her bedroom, with Sean still laying in his bed in the room across from her. She fell asleep quickly, breathing slowly in and out as the owl hooted outside.

. . .

She was back again, in the field of corn. By this point, the corn field felt more like a home to Maggie than the apartment did. She heard the hymn again, and felt the cool earth beneath her, then she noticed what she was wearing. It was different than what she had worn to bed, a pale blue dress, cinched at the waist. It was made of a thin jersey material, and soft against her ghostly white skin. She felt comfortable, but exposed and vulnerable. She could see the nipples of her small breasts through the dress when she looked down. She walked slowly toward the hymn, pushing the stalks of corn aside gently as she walked. Then she came to the clearing with the house, the same old woman was sitting in her armless rocking chair on the porch, accompanied by her pretty guitar. Maggie felt the warmth and she smiled.

"Hello, Mother Abigail," Maggie said as she neared the house, her wavy falling loosely down her back. "I'm so happy to see you."

"Well, likewise Maggie, likewise," Mother Abigail said amiably in her raspy voice. "But I'm here to tell you that you got to get a move on."

"M'am?" Maggie asked with her brows furrowed. "Movin' on where?"

"Well, to Hemingford Home, of course. Hemingford Home, Nebraska. You got to come see me here, you and all your friends."

"I suppose I can try m'am," Maggie smiled, thinking of how nice it would be to visit Mother Abigail right now.

"Oh, you got to try, Maggie. He's coming on soon. And we gotta be there to stop him."

Maggie felt the urge to turn and her vision shot back into the corn, where she saw those, now familiar, red eyes. And when she awoke, she got down to business.

. . .

It was already around midnight, and she wanted to leave the apartment building as soon as possible so she could get some traveling time in before it got too hot the next afternoon. So she packed a bag quickly, but she knew she'd have to get more supplies from somewhere once she got on the road. The first order of business was a bike. She couldn't drive a car, or wouldn't since the accident those 8 months ago, and there would be a lot of cars clogging the road full of dead people anyway. She packed only the things she knew she would never get anywhere else.

Pictures. She packed 7 pictures, taking them from the full shoebox that they had on the top shelf of the hall closet; Missy had always thought storing them that way was very efficient for some reason. She took an old stuffed rabbit that she'd been given on the day she was born, it was well worn and had spent the better part of 5 years underneath her various beds, but Maggie felt inclined to bring it anyways. She took Missy's engagement ring off of Sean's shelf, and one of Finn's little blue socks. She took a bow that had belonged to Colleen from that same shelf she'd taken the ring from. And then she took the lace from one of Sean's work boots. She packed it all into that old patchwork purse, and then she was done. She had a piece of everyone.

She thought about taking a shower, but then she remembered the lights were out, _everything_ was out. She put on a gray t-shirt, jean shorts, and her brown flip flops. She knew she'd need to get some walking boots once she got on the road as well as a bike, and a gun. Maggie had always been against guns, and she was not excited about having to procure one, but she knew it was necessary. The shower had lasted a while, and it was clock to half past one in the morning when Maggie found the matches in the kitchen cabinet, she didn't have any gasoline, but she knew that hairspray was flammable, so she grabbed a bottle from the bathroom. She wasted a couple minutes spraying the body, and at this point she was starting to cry and tears were dripping onto Sean's light gray sheets. And then she decided fuck it, so she unscrewed the cap and poured the rest of the bottle into the sheet that covered her brother. She didn't say a eulogy or anything, she knew he knew that she loved him very much. She was breathing heavily and her hands were shaking, so it took her several tries to strike the match. But when she struck it, she threw it on the covered body and it ignited immediately, she scurried to the front door, grabbing her patchwork purse and her black waterproof watch as she went.

She ran out of the apartment which would be burned to the ground by 2:30. She was crying and running, she had to make it to town so she could get food and shoes, a gun, a travel pack and a sleeping bag from the old WalMart. They had everything there.

 **Author's Note:** So sorry this is a day late, but I hope you liked it! PLEASE rate and review! Two more chapters, and then Nick and his friends will show up! :) I wanted this to really be a story about Maggie and her journey, so I thought these first few chapters just for her were important. I hope you agree. Thank you so much for reading! Again, please review. Have a great day!

Peace and love.


	4. Chapter Four

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part One:** _June 1990_

 _ **Warning:**_ _This chapter contains obscene language and mature themes._

 **Chapter Four**

The walk to the WalMart on that first day of traveling reminded Maggie of the walk she had taken to Sean and Missy's apartment the night she got the scar on her cheek. It took around six hours, with various crying breaks interspersed. She lived about twelve miles from the WalMart, and she watched the sun come up as she walked. It was odd seeing no one else in town, besides the dead bodies of course, most of which were still only in their first stage of decay. The ripe smell of decomposition had only just begun to pepper the air, and Maggie tried to pay no mind to their stench. At the moment she arrived to the doors of the WalMart, for some reason she was struck by the thought, with some disappointment and frustration, that the fresh laundry that she had just washed and dried had burned up in the fire she'd lit. That was enough to fill her with anger at the fragile state she was in. She took off her flip flop and threw it at the WalMart window; the doors were locked anyway, so she supposed she'd try the easy way first and get her anger out at the same time. Killing two birds with one stone.

Eventually Maggie broke the window by running at it with an abandoned shopping cart at full speed. She expected to have been more cut by the glass, but there were only a couple of slices on her arms and that was all. First, she went for the gun. It was hard to choose one that was right for the job, considering she didn't know anything at all about them. But she decided on a handgun, though she wasn't sure why they had those at WalMart where anyone in the old days could have found them, or anyone in the new days could find them for that matter. Then she got a pack, as well as a sleeping bag. She picked up some dark brown boots in a size seven, as well as a water bottle, a couple plastic bottles for good measure, and a bunch of granola bars. It wasn't the meal of champions, but she could improve her diet as she stopped at other grocery stores along the way. She packed up all of her belongings, strapping the sleeping bag to the outside, and made it to the bike section. She got a nice black Schwinn, she wasn't sure if it was a good bike or not, but in the old days it would have been considered expensive, and she could always find a better one along the way. The last thing she grabbed was a flashlight. 'Just in case' was her new motto. She didn't even have to pay; what a steal. So, she left the WalMart, and an hour later, as she crossed the Murphy town line, she checked her watch: _10:17_. And, after 23 years of living there, Maggie MacNeil never returned to Murphy.

. . .

On June 29, Maggie made it to the Queen City. Maggie hadn't ever really been to a big city, and she was in awe of all the industry there. She'd arrived there at around six in the evening, it was a nice night outside, but she was hoping to find an open house somewhere, to at least have some shelter in a city so big. It made her feel unsettled to be in a place that had so many high buildings; here there were robot owls instead of live ones.

She stopped at a gas station first, continuing her diet of granola bars and water. The store was dark, and the comforting sounds of nature around her had ceased; the Queen City was quiet. Until Maggie heard a bang and felt what was presumably a bullet whizz past her left temple. Maggie immediately dropped to her knees, fumbling with her pack, digging inside for the flashlight and the gun.

"Who's there?" she heard someone ask in a gruff voice.

"I-I...don't know," she replied apprehensively. "Depends on who you are."

She looked up just as her hand settled around the gun, the faint light of evening around her allowed for only a general outline of a very tall man. He had a rifle, army boots, and was dressed in all camo. He also sported some reflective aviator sunglasses, and he seemed like less of a person and more a creature to Maggie because she couldn't see his eyes.

"Private First Class Greg McAllister," he said solemnly.

Maggie got back on her feet, getting her now more full pack on her back once again, the granola bar well had been replenished.

She smiled as affably as she could manage, a gesture which the soldier did not return, and held out her left (and gun-free) hand for him to shake.

"Maggie MacNeil."

He took her thin hand, with her long fingers and nails which in the old days were always painted. They still had some dark purple polish on them, but it was most of the way chipped off. She'd held the gun behind her back, and in the dark she doubted Private First Class Greg McAllister had been able to see it yet. The soldier with a mouthful of a title, however, held the rifle long ways in his right hand quite boldly. To Maggie, it looked oddly like a snake, and it then occurred to her that this soldier was the first live person she'd seen in almost three days. And some person he was, would she have to start travelling with him? She wondered. He didn't look like he wanted that, but who knew, maybe he was as scared as she was. She tried to have an open mind.

He continued to shake her hand, and Maggie would've preferred if he'd broken contact by the time he tried to pull her towards her. She tried to resist, but he was strong, probably from all those fucking push-ups the army had made him do. His hot, revolting breath hit her skin and gave her goosebumps, but not the good kind. She felt a little sick to her stomach, and thought, _I bet he's burned some bodies before._

 _(You ain't seen the devil yet.)_

"I'm gonna make you my bitch, little girl," he growled, his callused fingers crushing her delicate ones. Maggie started hyperventilating a little, and tried to break free of his grasp. Then she remembered his rifle, and her handgun.

"I bet you're tasty, honey-babe," he continued with his first sign of emotion, a sly grin, one Maggie thought would've been better accompanied by razor sharp shark teeth, rather than his crooked set.

"You look like you're crazy in the sack, you whore."

At that, she kneed him in the balls and his grasp loosened. He staggered away from her a little, and she readily backed away, still with the gun behind her back. She hadn't ever killed anyone before, and she didn't want to start, but it was beginning to look like murder might just be necessary. By then, he was recovering, and Maggie was working hard to maintain her composure. She could've run, but she knew he'd catch her. He looked back at her (or, at least, his head turned toward her, his sunglasses were still in place on the bridge of his wide nose), and this time he wasn't so mechanical. He rambled towards her almost comically, his right hand still cupping his sack.

"Oooo, good, you're a feisty bitch, huh? Well, I'll tell you something, you shouldn't've done that, baby-love," he said, and Maggie noticed he didn't really have an accent, he was from nowhere.

 _Nowhere man, the world is at your command,_ Maggie thought disjointedly, remembering the lyrics from an old Beatles song, she'd loved the Beatles in the old days. She supposed she was still allowed to love them now, it would just probably be awhile before she'd be able to hear them again.

"I'll give it to you real rough the first time for that, I'll suck your clit between my teeth, angelbaby."

Then, she clicked down the hammer of the handgun, and pulled it out from behind her back. Her hands were shaking and she could feel the sweat gathering on her back. The soldier took his hand away from his balls and tried to point his rifle at her when he saw her with the weapon, but he probably knew, being a firearms man himself, that he was done for. She pulled the trigger just as he was raising the rifle to his shoulder. She got him in the left eye, and that was how Maggie MacNeil figured out she was an amazing shot. _Badass,_ she thought disjointedly, _Just like at the end of The Godfather._ Blood poured out from underneath those reflective aviators in one spurting stream, and then it was just leaking slowly.

As the soldier fell to the ground, he managed to say, "Babydoll, no," before he was dead for good. Then Maggie's ears started ringing, and she started to scream. She screamed for a long time, out of rage or misery, she didn't know. She knew the soldier would've raped her and then probably killed her, but now she was a murderer. And she'd never planned on that before. Eventually, her throat felt raw, and she didn't have a voice. She'd just stood there, leaning against the wall of the convenience store, screaming. Then she just left, the soldier and his rifle still lying where they had fallen. The rifle was diagonally across his chest in such a way that it reminded Maggie of a show she'd seen on National Geographic once, when they would put the really special kings in their coffins as mummies, they would lay their arms across their chests, that was a sign that they were royalty.

Maggie thought a lot about mummies as she walked around a park in the queen city, she eventually found a bus stop with a covered bench that was inhabited by a corpse like many of the others were. _Who takes a bus when they've got the superflu?_ Maggie wondered. She pushed it aside and tried to get into a comfortable position on the bench, with her backpack underneath her head, her greasy hair put into a french braid. _God, I miss showers._ She could've found a better place to sleep, like a bed, for example. And she could've found a safer place to sleep like she had planned to when she first got there, like a room, with a door, for example. But on that night, she didn't feel like she deserved a bed or food or water or protection or anything. She was a murderer. _I'm a murderer,_ she thought as she was drifting off to sleep, she could see the stars through the transparent roof of the bus stop, _I turned that soldier into a royal mummy with a rifle, and I burned Sean, and I buried Finn. They're all dead._

. . .

That night was a long one, she dreamed that same dream of Missy and Colleen appearing on the road in front of her, with that maggot once again peeking out of little Colleen's nose. It had happened eight months before, but now it seemed like eight years since the day of the funeral. They were driving home from the park, Sean was home with baby Finn, who was sick with a little cold. Maggie was in her apartment a few streets over, reading _To Kill A Mockingbird_ ; it was one she'd read probably twenty times. The window was open, and Maggie actually heard the crash; that's how loud it was. But she thought nothing of it, a lot of loud noises came from town, and occasionally she would hear the sounds of sirens. So, on October 11, 1989, Maggie just kept on reading. It was evening, around six, and she'd had a long day at work; sometimes Jennifer and Lena were close to unbearable. She'd gotten off early at four after skipping her lunch hour, and had taken a long shower. She'd only just begun to read when she heard the crash, sitting in a dining chair by the window with her wet hair making patches on her pink henley shirt as it dried. And then about fifteen minutes later, the phone rang, but it wasn't that kismet thing that always happens in the stories where Maggie just knew. She didn't know, and she did not sound particularly bothered when she answered the phone.

"Hello?"

"Hey...Maggie?" Sean said on the other end of the line, and that's when Maggie knew something was wrong. She could hear it in his voice.

"Um, yeah, Seanny boy. It's me. You called my house, y'know," she tried to tease, or lighten the mood, or something.

"It's Missy and Colleen. They got in a car accident, I don't really know anything. Allen at the police just called me from the pay phone at the corner of Birch and Maple," he said hastily. The town of Murphy had a thing about streets named after trees. "Can you meet me down there?"

"Oh, yeah. I'll be right there," she said and Sean hung up right after. She grabbed some sneakers and put them on without socks, grabbed the keys (forgetting her purse and her watch), and ran down to the car. She would've felt self-conscious about being out in public in black leggings which showed her panty lines, and without a bra, but she was much too busy trying not to panic. Her hands were shaky and her heart was racing, but she tried not to think of the worst. Maybe they just called Sean because Missy was getting a cut bandaged or because Colleen was pestering her and she was too busy. Everything was fine and everyone was fine and everything would be fine.

The scene with which Maggie was met at the intersection of Maple and Birch would likely be burned into her memory forever. It was head on, the red truck had peeled around the corner right into Missy's green pinto. The stop sign had been hit and demolished when the red truck had continued to move, dragging the pinto and causing it to flip, and subsequently catch on fire. The jaws of life hadn't managed to save Missy or Colleen. The driver was in critical condition for days, but he eventually died due to head trauma. His blood alcohol level had been three times the legal limit at six o'clock on a Saturday evening. Sean was a mess, of course, as was Maggie, but they'd picked their lives up and kind of pieced them back together by the time the superflu had hit. Sean would cry during the nights, and of course he kept the ring and the bow on his shelf, but he wasn't very open with his emotion, and neither was Maggie. They were still close, but their was a distance between them, something unexplainable and weird. And, of course, there was Finn, who would never remember his mother or his sister. And now, once again, Maggie's life had gone to shit. But this time there wasn't much of a life left, anyway.

 **Author's Note:** Yay, surprise chapter! This is of course making up for the travesty that occurred when I posted the third chapter a day late. I hope this chapter will suffice. Just one more and then Nick Andros will arrive! Get. Ready.

Anyway, I'm not too sure if anyone reads this story. But if anyone does, I hope you like it! PLEASE review or rate. Have a great day!

Peace and love.


	5. Chapter Five

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Two:** _July 1990_

 **Chapter Five**

She spent twelve days alone, slowly making her way through Tennessee and Missouri, and by July 11, Maggie was halfway through Kansas. She'd been doing okay, and she hadn't seen another living human, but in a way it was a good thing. There was nothing but the earth, the sun, and the moon. And of course the animals, which didn't seem to be so shy without all of the humans around. She'd seen countless deer and birds, and a lot of sunsets. There was also a lot more athletic stamina in her now that she'd been riding a bike all day everyday; she was always skinny, but never toned. In school, she'd hated sports and didn't even like to think about gym class. Too many bad memories to relive.

On July 2, when she'd gotten her period, it had been kind of a scramble for a few hours. But once she found a store around three quarters of the way through Tennesee, where she had picked up a big box of tampons (and a couple extra pairs of underwear from a clothing store in the same strip mall), she was back in business. It was odd for her to think about the fact that she was still menstruating after most of the human race was dead. The world just keeps on turning. That did make travelling a little harder for those five days of her cycle, having to stop every six hours or so. But the time management thing was easy for Maggie because of her trusty black watch. She could've gotten a newer, nicer one by then, but there didn't seem to be a need. And when she stopped bleeding on the morning of the sixth day, and she wouldn't have to worry about it again for another 27 days.

It was around half past 12 on July 11, and Maggie was riding through town center in the small town of Abilene, Kansas (a very pretty name in Maggie's book), and she was thinking she might soon stop for lunch. Her hair was wavy and flying loosely behind her as she rode, not nearly as greasy as before. She'd managed to find a relatively clean stream to get water from two days before; she'd gotten a lighter and a pot from yet another deserted store and boiled it, washing her hair with some coconut scented shampoo she'd found at that same store. She'd donned a white t-shirt and jean shorts, with those same dark brown boots still on her feet. It had been nice always having new things and then being able to discard old things, like toothbrushes and shirts. But deodorant was one thing she'd found very vital to always have in her pack on this trip. Yes, on that day, Maggie actually felt quite good and refreshed.

It had been a good dream the night before, Mother Abigail told her she was making good progress and to get to Hemingford Home as soon as possible. A couple nights ago it had been a nightmare, with the soldier this time instead of her father, so a dream with Mother Abigail in it had been even more welcome than usual. Maggie couldn't wait to meet her in person, unlike the others that Mother Abigail had been recruiting, Maggie had never doubted that the old woman, or the man with no face, were real. It just wasn't in her machinery. She'd believed in Santa Claus until she was nine, when she found out that the little trinkets she always got for Christmas were actually Sean stealing things from the Toys R Us in a town nearby. That was the Christmas that Sean got arrested, but that's a different story. Maggie knew they were real, she could feel it, she'd always been one of those people who could walk into a room and know how each person was feeling. She just knew.

Maggie didn't hear them coming, and she was never sure why. Was she just too deep in thought? Was a bird chirping too loudly? Who's to say? Anyway, there were three of them, three men in a van, and they blew out her back tire. Maggie fell instantly, near the left side of the road, scraping her left upper arm and calf almost raw, and crying out in surprise. She'd hit her head on the asphalt on the way down. It buzzed and swam with nauseating pain, her vision blurred for a moment and then returned to normal. Her bike skidded out in front of her and the dark blue van came to a slow stop next to her. She was fumbling through her pack for her gun again, as she had when she'd met the soldier. Her arm and leg were stinging and burning as if they were on fire, but she kept looking for the gun.

"Well, well, well," said a very southern, very nasally male voice. "What've we got here, boys? A real pretty little doll. Tell me sugar, what's a girl like you doing all alone out here? It ain't safe, y'know."

A car door opened and Maggie looked up to see a man of probably around thirty, with curly brown hair and an atrocious mustache. He wore a gray wife-beater and blue jeans; the picture of success and class. Maggie could see the two other men through the open windows of the van, one in the passenger, one in the left captain seat. They looked equally as slimy. The mustache man was almost close enough that the toe of his boot was touching her knee, and he was looming over her; she could see the beer belly poking over his waistband. Then, her hand closed around her gun in her backpack. This time it felt more familiar, and she felt more willing.

"Say, why don't we pick you up, clean you off, and we'll all have some fun tonight, huh? Even if you're not eighteen, there's no rules now," he said with a wide grin.

Maggie then pulled the gun, the sweltering heat and pain she was feeling made her vision go a little blurry again, and she suddenly felt exhausted. The greaseball's eyes widened as she pointed her piece at him and pulled down the hammer; it clicked.

"Fuck off," she said clinically, she wasn't in the mood. She guessed they probably had a gun, everyone probably did in the new world, but she certainly wasn't going to become a sex toy for anyone. She'd kill herself if she needed to.

"Hey. Be cool," said grease-stache as he backed towards the car with his hand up. "Just calm down, we got some guns in the back of our car that are a little more impressive than yours. So, either put that gun down and get your pretty little ass in the car, or you can see what it feels like to stare down the barrel of a rifle."

"Right, and when one of you tries to get those fucking amazing guns out of the trunk, I'll blow all of your fucking heads off. Perhaps next time you should keep your guns within arms reach, hmm?" she smirked as grease-stache backed right up against the car and realized his mistake. His buddies had their hands up too. Maggie was glad, she was facing dumb criminals this time, and that was so much easier.

"Hey now, maybe we can give you a ride someplace, we're on our way to Vegas if you wanna come. And you'll get a better idea of what we mean, or you can pick which one of us you want to take you,"grease-stache tried to negotiate.

How horny could they be? Maggie felt sorry for whatever women had pleasured them in the old world, them again, she might just be feeling sorry for those guys' own hands.

"Maybe you didn't hear me the first time," Maggie said with her eyebrows raised, having had enough. She shot through the open back window, uncomfortably close to the head of the mildly obese man sitting in the captain seat. His beady eyes widened and he let out a shrill cry, but he didn't flinch. _Interesting,_ Maggie thought.

"I said, _FUCK OFF_!" she yelled.

Without another word, grease stache got into the driver's seat and peeled away. Maggie was greatly relieved, and she let out a long, deep breath. She really didn't feel like killing anyone else, it just wasn't her style. Then she got very drowsy, and the stinging pain felt almost numb. Her vision blurred, and she passed out as a crow flew over the town center of Abilene, Kansas. She did not dream that night.

 **Author's Note:** Okay, now I'll stop with the posting too many chapters in one day. I promise. This one is just very short and I felt like it shouldn't be the only thing I post on one day. Next chapter our friends from _The Stand_ will arrive! Also, the chapters will begin to be much longer. Just as a warning. But that's okay, right? I hope so.

PLEASE let me know what you think of the story so far by reviewing! It would be just lovely to hear some of your opinions. But I digress. I hope you enjoyed the chapter and I will see you all again next week!

Peace and love.


	6. Chapter Six: Part One

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Two:** _July 1990_

 **Chapter Six:** Part One

Maggie was out for around 22 hours. The hit to her head had caused a mild concussion, but for whatever reason, there was no real damage. After she'd passed out, there were no dreams, and her head healed miraculously fast. Well, stranger things have happened. She'd been baking in the heat, and all the exposed parts of her body were close to lobster red. Though she did have sunscreen in her pack for her pale skin, she'd forgotten to put it on the morning of July 11th. But at around eleven o'clock in the morning on July 12th, Maggie finally woke up. Or, well, she was awoken by the yelling of Tom Cullen.

"Miss? 'Scuse me, Miss?!" he shouted near her face, bending down and getting back up when the girl lying close to the sidewalk didn't stir.

"She's not waking up," he told his silent new best friend. They'd been traveling together for around ten days, and Tom Cullen had been having a lot of fun. His new friend was really nice, and he was excited to meet the old lady with the guitar, but two days ago they'd almost gotten shot by a crazy girl. And a couple days before that they'd hid in a barn during a tornado. It had been a pretty exciting trip, laws yes. But now, his friend just shrugged. Then, the girl on the pavement started to move.

Maggie fought to climb out of unconsciousness for a couple moments before she cracked open her eyes and immediately had to shield them from the sun with her forearm. Her head was pounding and her throat was very dry, she could hardly remember the events from the previous day at all. She turned her head towards the two men when one of them shouted, "Look!"

One was around five foot nine, with white blond hair and blue eyes, he looked around twenty-five or thirty. The one with the dark hair and the eyepatch ( _Is he a pirate?_ Maggie thought hazily when she first saw it.) was taller, but looked a few years younger. Maybe nineteen or twenty.

"Oh, my laws, I'm so glad you're okay!" said the blond one excitedly as he offered her a hand.

She took it and got to her feet, but immediately turned to her right, vomiting onto the sidewalk, and squatting down. She put the back of her right hand to her mouth and took some deep breaths through her nose. The many hours in the sun and the concussion had gotten to her stomach. She was instantly mortified that the first thing she'd down in front of these strangers, before even saying a word, was toss her cookies.

She expected them to be repulsed by her, but instead the blond one asked in a concerned tone, "Oh, do you have that bad cold everyone else was getting?"

"No," she spoke for the first time, getting to her feet and turning back to them, "I'm sorry. I was- I got kind of attacked by these guys and I passed out because I hit my head and… I w-was out in the sun for a long time, oh let's see…" she stammered, and stopped to look at her watch, "Twenty two hours. I'm okay now, though." Then it occurred to her that these strangers might not be so nice, the others surely hadn't been model citizens. She took a step back, almost tripping.

"Well, my name's Tom Cullen," said the blond one happily and stuck out his hand for her to shake; she did. The dark-haired one had a small smile on his face.

"And this is my friend," Tom Collen continued, "But I don't know what his name is because he's deaf and dumb, and I can't read. But he's really smart, though, laws yes he is. M-O-O-N, that spells smart."

Maggie smiled widely, taking her hand back as they stopped shaking. They were good, she just knew it.

"It's so nice to meet y'all. I'm Maggie MacNeil," she said with a grin in her mild southern drawl.

The dark-haired one nodded at this, then stepped forward and shook her hand. His fingers felt callused and rough against her own; a workingman's hands. After that, he took out a pad and started writing.

 _My name is Nick Andros_ , it read, _m_ _y friend Tom is mildly retarded. We're on our way to Nebraska._

"Nebraska?" Maggie beamed. "Did you dream of Mother Abigail, too?"

She noticed Nick reading her lips as she spoke. He smiled and nodded.

"I was going to Hemingford Home, that's where y'all are headed right?" Maggie asked. Nick nodded again. He was elated to have found someone else who was good.

Then something occurred to Maggie.

"Well, Tom, your friend here's name is Nick. Nick Andros."

Tom grabbed Nick's hand, shaking it vigorously and enveloping the tall man into a hug. "Well, Nick Andros! How ya doin'? Nice to meet ya, laws yes!"

Nick just smiled and hugged Tom back. Then, when they broke away from each other, Nick motioned for Maggie to sit down. She did, the raw part of her leg beginning to sting again when she sat down in the hot pavement, but the rest was welcome. Nick crouched down in front of her and took his bag off his bag, he took out some cotton balls and peroxide. He drenched the cotton in the antiseptic and perched Maggie's chin up with his opposite hand, but she flinched at the contact. Nick immediately pulled his hands away and held them up in surrender.

"Sorry," Maggie said, embarrassed. "Just a reflex."

She smiled sheepishly. Nick smiled back and proceeded to press the cotton to a spot on Maggie's forehead that she didn't even know was bleeding. The blood had dried around it and Nick wiped it off in flecks. He discarded the cotton onto the ground (the street was already filled with dead bodies, Nick figured a little litter wouldn't be such a crime), let her drink some of his water, and then wrote on his notepad, _Are you sure you're okay?_

" _Yes. Thank you,"_ Maggie said in sign language. Nick's eyes widened. He hadn't had the opportunity to use sign language since Rudy, his teacher at the orphanage, and that had been around six years. This was the first _pleasant_ surprise that Nick had happened upon in a while. He smiled at her and helped her up. Tom, meanwhile had been going around in circles on his bike, trying to make himself dizzy. And it worked, laws yes, it did.

" _You know sign language?"_ Nick signed, amazed. Maggie smiled.

" _When I was a kid, my best friend was deaf,"_ she explained. Nick smiled back, it would be nice to not have to write so much. Hand cramps had always plagued Nick Andros, but as luck would have it, the superflu had not.

"Well," she said, making sure to keep her mouth in his view, "are gonna move on to Nebraska?"

. . .

Once they worked things out by getting Maggie a new bike at a shop in the center of Abilene, the three of them traveled rather quickly. Or, at least it seemed quick to Nick compared to the time they'd been making in previous days. They managed to get about fifteen or twenty miles in a couple hours before they decided to stop for the day. They camped out in the open air that night, in some tiny little Kansas town none of them bothered to learn the name of. The fire they made was warm, and Tom was out like a light. Then, Maggie and Nick were sitting next to each other in silence by the light of the fire. Maggie looked at her watch; _11:57_. Lord, time surely was passing faster than when she was alone. She turned to face Nick, who looked sideways at the fire with that one good eye. She touched his shoulder and he turned his head towards her, and smiled. He thought she was rather pretty, and even prettier because she knew sign language. He liked the way her hair fell around her face, and the way her eyes looked in the light of the fire.

"Do you have a gun?" she asked abruptly, without sign language, snapping Nick out of his trance.

" _Sorry what?_ " he signed.

She breathed in deeply and asked again. "Do you have a gun with you?"

Nick just nodded.

"So do I," she said solemnly.

A silence fell in the dusky summer air for a few minutes then, both of them staring back at the fire. Maggie looked away after a little while, staring into something so hot made her eyes feel sweaty and dry, in that peculiar way that only a fire can. She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, and then just rested her head in them with her elbows on her knees. She didn't feel tired in a sense that she needed to sleep, but she just couldn't take anymore. She felt like she had nothing left to give. She felt _drained_ , in a way. But at least one of her fears was gone, she wasn't the only nice one left. _Am I even nice?_ she thought wearily, _What ultimately determines the difference between a good guy and a bad guy? And is that determining thing big or small? If I_ am _good right now, can I turn bad? Could everyone turn bad?_

But then, Maggie decided that those questions were too heavy for that night, she could ask herself those later. Maybe when she got to Nebraska. Oh, how she hoped for a Nebraska dream that night. Nick tapped her shoulder, she didn't realize how heavy her eyes felt then, how heavy her brain felt. She looked over at him, and he had a note ready, held out for her in his hand. She smiled a little and took it. He smiled a little back at her, and watched her as she read it, not wanting to have to ask her to repeat her response.

 _Who were you before?_ the note read.

She pondered this for a minute, not really sure how to reply. Who was she? _A nobody_ , she thought bitterly, but knew that wasn't much of an answer. She heard the warm crackling of the fire next to her, and then felt a little sad when another thought flashed through her mind: _Nick can't hear it._

"A waitress," she finally blurted out, after deciding she wasn't really ready to talk about the family. _Ugh, just don't think. Don't think about them._

"Who were you?" she asked.

Nick shrugged and then wrote another note. _A drifter,_ it said.

. . .

Maggie knew immediately it would not be a good dream that night after meeting Nick Andros and Tom Cullen, the sound of the crackling fire soothing her into sleep. And she heard a familiar sound around her as she became conscious of herself in the crackling of fire wasn't a friendly one, though. There was a malicious intention behind it, she supposed the word for it wasn't even crackling, it was _raging_. The word they used to describe the wildfires out in Los Angeles, and Tucson, and Death Valley during the heat waves which now seemed to plague every summer. She felt the warmth of fire all around her, even the sandy floor beneath her burned through her socked feet. Then, she could see it, and she could _smell_ it. The bodies. They were burning them. After that realization, she had another one: she recognized where she was.

It was the Jolly Roger Pier, at the beach in North Carolina. She'd only been two times before in her life, once at three and the second time at the age of four. Back around twenty years ago, when things had still been relatively good. Maggie vaguely recalled some dim memories of eating turkey sandwiches slathered with mayonnaise at a crummy motel right on the beach, of her mother's long red hair waving crazily when it got wet with the sea water, and of Sean burying her in the sand. But here, things did not have the filmy scent of sea air. There was no sun, and though it was night, there was not a star nor the moon to be seen. The sky was an endless abyss of darkness, a deep but somehow hollow midnight blue. The splintering, termite eaten wood of the pier was burning around the edges before her, almost creating a pathway to the edge, leading to the murky, greenish blackish water below. Towards this edge, a mountain of bodies reached almost to that vacuum of a sky, and blazed with a rusty orange and blue flame, a flame so big it devoured all of the bodies ( _hundreds? thousands_ ) at once. This fire licked the sky, and sprayed the air with an endless dusting of ashes, so dense it almost looked like snow. In front of the bodies, staring at her with those familiar red eyes, was the lighter of the flames, or so Maggie named him in her head. He was not really a man, so much as he was just a form. A shadow that could almost mask itself as human, trick someone into thinking it was one of them. But in her dream, Maggie could feel the inhuman quality about him. She could feel the way his eyes on her made her skin crawl, the way his menacing grin ( _If he's a shadow, how can he be grinning?_ , she wondered) almost seemed to make her feel cornered and small, like she was a mouse caught in a trap.

All of a sudden, she heard thunder roll overhead and her train of thought was interrupted. She looked up to see a dark sky full of storm cloud, they illuminated every few seconds with distant lighting, make their dark gray surface appear purplish. It was then that Maggie became aware of her own form in the dream, she looked down to see herself wearing exactly what she had worn to go to sleep, but now the clothes hung from her body in tattered, burned rags. The skin on her arms and legs appeared to have the same singed look, but they had even less color than they normally did. Her skin had wrinkled and gone a milky white, almost as though she'd spent too long in water and had pruned up. Her nails had yellowed and chipped to become nothing more than stubs, and her hair hung in scant locks around ghostly face. She ran her tongue over her teeth in a nervous gesture but discovered that most of them were gone, and the few left seemed to be chipped and broken, scratching her tongue. She imagined the teeth left were probably black and rotted, and she didn't even want to think about what her face must look like now.

A crack of lightning rung in her ears and she saw it strike the pile of bodies. She thought it ironic that this pile was already flaming. _Fire on fire,_ she thought crazily and almost felt like laughing in spite of herself. After the mound of bodies was struck, the one on the top, which could seemingly touch the sky, rolled past all the other corpses and descended the stack, still engulfed in the fire. It hit the wood of the pier below with a _thump_ , but then began to crawl forward towards her. She looked at it with disgust and tried to run, like she had in her other dreams, but she found herself paralyzed. Her swollen, fish-like feet were almost glued to the pier below her. Her eyes widened and her mind ceased to think for a moment, as it always does in moment of sheer panic and terror. The fear must have shown on her face because the lighter of the flames erupted in laughter as the flaming corpse continued to inch its way to her. When it was almost close enough to touch her feet, it looked up towards Maggie, and her eyes met the black, hollow sockets where the corpse's should have been. She let out a shrill cry as she recognized the body to be Sean.

"Better join your brother now, Maggie," the lighter of the flames finally spoke in a gravelly, inhuman voice that Maggie recognized from previous dreams. "You will anyway when we finally meet in the desert."

Maggie's mind raced with no thoughts in particular, just fear. Then something seemed to speak from inside her own mind, but in her frightened haze she could barely tell if the voice belonged to Mother Abagail or the lighter of the flames.

" _Dark man_ ," the voice whispered.

( _You ain't seen the devil yet._ )

( _Laura better run._ )

The Sean-Corpse continued staring blankly at her with it's hollow sockets, it's mouth opening to reveal a colony of maggots inside. It's nose appeared to have been either burned or eaten off completely, and it's clothes looked to be in the same state as Maggie's. But still, the body burned. And then a revolting thought occurred to Maggie, _Was I one of those bodies?_ And just as her eyes widened with the weight of that thought, the Sean-Corpse reached out to touch her with it's remains of a hand. Suddenly Maggie was sure that if that thing touched her, she would become one of them, she would be dead and gone like all the rest. Like Sean, and Missy, and Finn, and Colleen, and her father, and her mother, and pretty much everyone else on the entire face of the Earth. She could feel the warmth of the fire engulfing it's bony corpse-hand on her thigh, it was ready to touch her and she would become one of them, one of the dark man's trophies, nothing more than-

 **Author's Note:** This chapter was long so I posted it in two parts! Just as a heads up. Thank you so much!

Peace and love.


	7. Chapter Six: Part Two

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Two:** _July 1990_

 **Chapter Six:** Part Two

Maggie awoke with a start, sitting up and gasping airily. Her hand flew to her mouth to stifle the noise, she had to keep reminding herself that she wasn't alone anymore. She drew her knees to her chest inside the red sleeping bag and rested her head on them. Her heart was beating loudly in her ears and she could feel it in her throat, but she was once again comforted by the warmth of the fire, though not so much by the crackling anymore. She rocked back and forth as the night slowly melted away into morning, as Nick Andros and Tom Cullen still slept, and as a crow flew overhead, cawing triumphantly.

. . .

Nick didn't know if it was morning or night when he first awoke, but as he sat up, one hand cradling the side of his pounding head, he saw that the misty light of morning was upon them. It was quite cool actually, especially for a July morning. The air was moist and Nick knew that today would be a humid one The pavement would steam as they rode along it, drenching them in even more sweat. He hoped for a river that day, a clean one, maybe they could actually bath sometime. But, he figured that probably wouldn't happen again until they made it to Nebraska, or Colorado? The dream last night hadn't been as clear as the others, but he thought Mother Abagail had told him _something_ about Colorado. Maybe Boulder? She had also mentioned Maggie, or at least he thought so. He looked over at her on his left, she was sleeping on her stomach, her head resting on her right hand. He could make out half of her face beneath the hair which covered it. The night before he'd thought of her as pretty, but now he knew she was beautiful. But it had almost nothing to do with how she had long, dark lashes framing her eyes, or long, thin legs and hips that swung gracefully when she walked. It was the feeling that she gave him. It seemed to him that she was almost the polar opposite of Julie Lawry, an unfortunate conquest he'd sought only a couple days before. She had seemed almost like a robot to him, or something not remotely human. A creature, really, a monster.

She'd almost radiated a stench of desperate adolescence, and a sexual need that almost scared Nick. He didn't really know why he'd had sex with her, he never thought of himself as that kind of a guy before. But, he had to remember that things were different now. Everything was different now. The shame he felt burned his cheeks, and he noticed he was still staring at Maggie. He cleared his throat and averted his gaze to the ashy remains of the fire, embarrassed even though neither Maggie nor Tom was awake yet. Would he have to tell Maggie about Julie? Why would he? Did he want to have sex with _Maggie_? He didn't know. He didn't really know much of anything anymore. He took a deep breath, still looking at the ashes. He became aware of the dull throbbing ache in his bad eye, then dug in his pack for the patch. He put it on wearily, still not sure if that eye would ever get better. He took a deep breath, trying to clear his mind. _Just get there. Get to Nebraska and everything will be okay. Then you can worry about other things_ , he thought to himself.

Despite his efforts, he couldn't keep his mind off of Maggie. Not just because of the clear attraction he felt, but also the uncertainty that came with it. He hadn't ever really figured out how old Julie was, and it occurred to him he didn't know how old Maggie was either. She looked older, sure, but looks can be deceiving. He got good vibes from her, but he was still keeping his guard up. She had asked about his gun the night before, a question which had brought up memories of the Julie Lawry incident again. Not that the sex wasn't shameful enough, he had hit her _and_ pulled a gun on her. What the hell was that about? Why had he done that? _That's not a nice guy thing to do, Nick,_ he told himself.

He sighed deeply, putting his head in his hands. He wondered what time it was and how long he would need to continue sitting here contemplating his existence and his character when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He jumped, his hand instinctively reaching for the holster that was no longer on his hip but he had packed into his bag after the Julie Lawry encounter. He looked to see Maggie to his left, looking at him with tired eyes.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," she said, rubbing at her eyes. She'd fallen back asleep around four in the morning, but that sleep was restless and hazy. She thought Mother Abagail may've been there but she didn't remember much. She did, however, remember the dream before that. Now she had a name for the face. Dark man. Nick handed her a note.

 _It's alright. Are you okay?_ it read. He thought she looked exhausted, then he thought to ask her about the dreams. Did she only have good ones?

She cleared her throat and sat up facing him, her arms wrapped around her knees. "Yeah, I just- I had a bad dream last night."

He wrote another note, he thought he could better articulate himself without sign language this morning. As he wrote, Maggie checked her watch; _5:13._

 _Was it about the dark man?_ Nick asked.

Her eyes widened. "Yes. He told me he was in the desert."

 _I think he's told me that before too, and sometimes Mother Abagail warns me about him. Do you think he's real?_

"I know he is," she told him solemnly. "I think he's in Las Vegas. That's where all the people I met before you were going."

Nick nodded, he looked back at the ashes a minute, then back towards her. She sighed, he could see her chest heave in and out.

"Have you killed anyone?" she asked abruptly, her eyes fixing on his. She thought his dark eyes were warm, kind. He blushed and looked down at his pad, he wrote a summary of his time in Shoyo, and the way Ray Booth had almost killed him, gouging his eye. He even added the part about him accidentally shooting himself and getting an infection as a result of the wound. The story ended with Ray Booth's death and Nick's consequent loneliness until he met Tom.

She read it carefully, her face remaining serene. Nick was anxiously awaiting an explosive response, in which she was appalled by his actions and then left, taking Tom with her. It struck him then how afraid he was of being alone again, things were so much better with other people around. Instead, she just looked up at him and nodded.

"I killed a soldier. He was trying to take me to be his sex toy or something. I don't know. But, I just-I shot him. I actually shot him in the eye, like right through his sunglasses. I didn't know I could do that before," she said. It was hard for her to maintain eye contact with him so he could read her lips as she told him. It was still hard for her to believe she was a murderer, and that the superflu had seemed to change her so much. A few weeks ago, everyone had still been alive, and she had still been just a waitress. She shivered a little in the cool morning air at that realization, but then pushed the thought away.

"Then, before you found me, those guys I told you about shot out my tires. So I almost killed them too, but I think they were a little less cunning than that friendly soldier I met back in North Carolina," she said, and then looked down with a half-hearted smile.

Nick nodded solemnly and then began writing again. He felt a little numb, sort of. He hadn't expected Maggie to have killed someone. But, in a way, a way he was very ashamed of, it made him feel better. It was almost as though that made them even, there was less of a chance of her thinking less of him now. He had a sense of disgust towards himself with this thought, and again the questions from earlier about his own character popped into his mind, but then he turned his attention to what he was writing.

 _I also pulled a gun on this girl a couple days before we met you. I had sex with her and then decided I didn't want to again. But, then she was making fun of Tom, so I slapped her. I didn't really mean to, well, I guess I did. But it sort of just happened. And then she told me she was going with us no matter what, so I took out the revolver and she ran away. Granted, she tried to kill us on our way out of town, but at least we're not traveling with her too,_ he wrote and handed it to her. His face once again burned red, and he looked back at those sooty ashes. In a sense it was almost like ripping off a band-aid, just sort of telling her everything. He just decided to be honest, and then things would go one way or the other. It was as she was reading the note and he looked into the ashes that he discovered how much he liked her already, how much he wanted to _be_ with her. It had been a long time since he'd really been with anybody, or had the chance to be with anybody.

. . .

There had been one woman, around three years before, but now it seemed like a hundred. Nick was nineteen, still possessing the cocky arrogance of a child. He was not quite a boy, but certainly not yet a man. By that time, he'd finally managed to gather enough GED credits to officially graduate. In the three years since the orphanage had gone bankrupt, Nick had been trying to balance his many odd jobs with doing some half-hearted schoolwork. That summer, the sense of freedom which filled him was refreshing and new. He thought he was an adult, and though sorely misinformed about that fact, the illusion of adulthood he created around himself was good enough that he almost fooled himself into thinking it was real. He figured he could actually be someone. But the truth was, Nick Andros had never really had _any_ idea of who he was or what he wanted to be. Perhaps he knew that, and perhaps he knew because of the years or being called a dummy and feeling less than human, but that summer he felt good. He felt full.

He was wandering around Vermont when he found the job on the farm. He liked it there, the air was crisp and clean, the night was cold but the days were mild, perfect for the manual labor jobs Nick had become so accustomed to. Nick made friends with a man who had picked him up in a truck while he was hitchhiking. This was something Nick did occasionally to get place to place, not driving a car certainly did have it's downsides. But Nick had no real way to learn, so he had made his peace with it. Although hitchhiking was definitely the fastest way to get around, Nick always did this with a slight air of caution. Never in big cities, never in areas of drug activity, never past eleven at night. These rules of thumb worked very well for him usually. So, when he was picked up around three in the afternoon in a small town in Vermont (Are there anything _but_ small towns in Vermont?) by a red pickup truck, he thought nothing of it. And he got a job working on the farm because of it.

That's where he met Jane Gunn. Her hair was short and a deep, coppery red, coming in a stick-straight fashion just below her chin. She had freckles all over her body, and was partial to wearing overalls over multi-colored tank tops. Nick was working planting seeds of corn out in the North West field when she came to bring all the men and women working some lemonade. Two weeks later, they kissed under the big oak tree near the pig pen. That's where they met usually, under the big tree, and just talked for a couple hours. They did this for a couple months, lasting the duration of the summer. During this time, Nick was sleeping in his red sleeping bag out in the field most nights, in the barn for rain. He made no friend except her, so keeping their relationship under wraps was not such a problem. The only real obstacle was Elston Gunn, a sixteen-year-old Jane's father, and the driver of the red pickup truck on that first day Nick went to the Gunn farm.

The night before Jane's school was set to start for the year, things got heated between the two of them, and both Jane and Nick ended up losing their virginities. As Jane slept in his arms under the tree that night, he thought of all the little things about her. The way her light brown eyes lit up around animals, the way she bit her nails when she was nervous, the way he had to bend down about a foot to kiss her because she was so short. She was a talker, but not one he'd ever had a real conversation with. He mostly listened as she talked about her girlfriends, or the next year's classes, the concert she was going to see next month. It was at those times he really noticed the age difference. But, young Nick Andros was certainly not the most mature boy to ever walk the Earth. He was independent, sure, but independence doesn't mean maturity.

Nick thought he could get around Jane's father and marry her someday, maybe even tomorrow. Sure, he had seen some of the other workers on the farm calling her a ditz, and saying she was mighty spoiled for a farm girl, but she was kind to Nick. And he was kind to her. He picked her flowers in the field, he caught her when she would slip on a loose rock as they walked through the big field, kiss her on the cheek as they watched the sky. Things were tender and swoony, and overwhelmingly _young_. Living in the moment as they were and being naive about the problems that not only faced them was the rest of the world seemed so very young to Nick in retrospect that it was almost comical. The important thing about Jane to Nick, he found out in retrospect as well, that she never made fun of him. She never thought less of him for being deaf or mute. That wasn't an entirely new thing to Nick, he had met some people similar in his travels, but most of them still seemed uncomfortable with him somehow, seemed like they felt he was different. This made him feel likewise uncomfortable, and he always liked when he found people who never made him feel that way.

The morning after he'd lost his virginity and was walking up the dusty road, away from the farm and toward who knows where, he recognized how selfish that was. His favorite thing about her was how she made _him_ feel. _You selfish prick._ , he called himself in his mind as he walked. He should've known, he should've broken it off with her before her father found them both asleep under the tree, before he saw the shotgun in her father's hand. He should've known that something like that would happen. That he would be chased off the property by Jane's older brother, who also had a shotgun and was the same gigantic size as Jane's father. He thought he heard Jane scream in pain as he ran, with nothing but his shirt in his hands, trying to buckle his belt as he ran. But he was never sure, and he never found out all that he had caused. All he had done to _her._ Of course he felt guilty after that, and he hadn't had sex with anyone for a long time. In fact, Julie Lawry was the second woman he'd ever had.

After that night, it took him a little while to get his life back together, get clothes and a backpack and what-not again. After all, he'd left all his money and possessions in his backpack, which for all he knew would sit in the grass next to that tree forever. But, Nick had done it, he got things back and took more jobs and went more places. _Because that's what I do, isn't it?_ , he thought as he stared at the ashes still, recalling those vents of three years before, _I get out and go, I find a new place to be for a while until something else bad happens, then I leave again. That's what Nick Andros does, he runs._ He shook his head softly and his eyes welled with a few tears. This was partially due to his guilt, and partially due to the fact that this was the first time he'd thought about them all being dead. Jane was dead, her father was dead, her brother was dead, everyone he'd ever met was dead. _And even now, I'm moving on. I'm picking up my own pieces and rebuilding. I'm running from everything that's happened. Way to go, Nicky._

. . .

Maggie read the note silently, breathing in and out, the cool air leaving her lungs feeling refreshed. She tried to savor the temperature while it lasted, she knew that the heat would soon arrive. Just as Nick was, she was relieved to discover she was not the only who had killed someone in the aftermath of Captain Tripps. She thought for sure when she met him that he was going to judge her for the lives she had lived both before, and after the superflu. She didn't think she was an extraordinarily bad person, but things were not always nice and rosy. But now she knew Nick had killed someone, and had sex with someone. She felt, with the same rueful sense that had filled her when she was glad her father was dead, a weight lift off of her shoulders. She felt more at peace, and then thought about all the other people who may have survived. What things had they had to do to stay alive? Now, it was eat or be eaten. _Well,_ she thought, _Not exactly, it's more get food and fight off the other animals. We are animals, aren't we?_ She then told herself not to be so self-centered, there were bigger fish to fry now. She couldn't only think about herself or how guilty she felt or the things that she had done. She almost felt responsible for them getting to Nebraska, like she was supposed to get people there, or help Nick to get people there. She felt something coming, something big, and she knew that things had to be done. Mother Abagail would tell them the rest.

She folded Nick's note up neatly and put it down next to her, she watched him stare at the ashes, his face red. She sympathetic to his embarrassment, they had both told each other some secrets. But she only wanted to know more, she wanted to know Nick Andros, to get to know him and let him get to know her. She had never had many friends, and always felt that she was going to be alone forever. But she certainly wasn't alone now. She tapped Nick on the shoulder once again, he turned to face her with a wistful look in his eyes, but soon the look cleared and he focused back in the present time.

"You think she was headed to the desert?" Maggie asked him, gesturing over to the note beside her with her eyes. "To _him_?"

Nick nodded, his mind still not totally back to the problems at hand. He was still trying to blink the tears away, but it struck him that Maggie didn't seem disgusted with him, or like she was planning to leave him. But the sense of relief he felt confused him, he had never had such a big fear of people leaving him. He'd always felt fine being a loner, but things had changed. _Again_ he was reminding himself that things were different now, that _everything_ was different now. He began to wonder if up until this point he had just been pretending that everything wasn't real, that it was just another dream. He also wondered how long he'd been seeing things that way, _if_ he had been. Had things seemed like a dream before the plague? Had he been shutting out the world his whole life? He sighed deeply, it was all just too much. Things were too real now. It was time to cut the crap and stop feeling the way he had when he was nineteen. It wasn't just him now, it was everyone.

In a way, that was the end of the old life for Nick Andros, just as the day that her brother died was the end for Maggie. They were the leaders now, they were the grownups. They had control. Both of them felt a little less hollow, even if it was a subconscious feeling, it was still there. Then Nick looked around, the ashes of the fire were starting to look depressing. He realized how the light had changed, the mist was nearly gone as a more yellowy light crept in, the blueish hue of early morning was gone. He felt lighter too, but at the time was only vaguely sure why.

He then asked her a spur of the moment question, signing instead of writing, " _How old are you?"_

Maggie smiled, and almost immediately almost all the tension and slight awkwardness left the conversation, "Twenty-three. How old are you?"

He signed a twenty-two, and then motioned for her to tell him the time, tapping his wrist. She glanced at her trusty watch and found that it was a little past six, and they decided that was as good a time as any to wake Tom, have some breakfast, and get on the road again. None of them were very sure how close they were to Nebraska, Hemingford Home to be exact, but it could be felt that they were getting there. Nick smiled as they got on their bikes, a shadow passed overhead and he looked up, shading his eye. He wasn't sure what kind of bird it was, but it looked rather similar to a crow.

 **Author's Note:** Well, there it is. Nick and Tom have finally arrived! And there's only more to come. I hope this chapter wasn't too long, but I warned you they would be longer now last time, didn't it? I just had to post it in two parts because of how long it was. I hope everyone enjoyed it! Thank you so much for reading!

PLEASE review. Have a great day!

Peace and love.


	8. Chapter Seven

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Two:** _July 1990_

 **Chapter Seven**

It was two days of peaceful travel for Nick, Tom, and Maggie. But around one o'clock in the afternoon on the third day, fat raindrops began to fall from the cloudy sky. The air had been smelling of a thunderstorm all day, but they had all hoped the storm would hold off until their normal stopping time. When the first rumble of thunder rolled through the sky, the collective decision was to stop and wait until it passed, but the rain ended up persisting for hours. After the initial thunder and cracks of lightning, the torrential downpours continued through the afternoon and into the evening. They were lucky enough to be around another nameless small town when the storm forced them to retreat indoors, so they camped out in a large colonial house. There was talk of seeking shelter in a diner in the middle of the town before the storm reached it's peak, but they ultimately decided to find somewhere without so many bodies. Nick was especially disturbed by the number of corpses there were in this particular town, of which none of them ever figured out the name. They seemed to be everywhere. Well, they were everywhere before, but now was the first time since Shoyo that Nick'd had a chance to stop and see them. His nose wrinkled in disgust of every sight or smell of all the death around him.

As they pedaled down a dirt road, Tom was the one who spotted the big house with the lush, green front yard. Maggie thought it was a wonder the grass wasn't brown and crunchy with the recent heat, but she thought maybe they had rain here more often than anywhere else they had been so far.

"That sure is a big house! Laws yes," Tom said in awe as they were moving slowly past it. The thickening rain made it much harder to move the bikes quickly. "Think we could sleep there?" he asked.

Maggie nodded to him, and then turned to Nick who was still looking ahead. She was careful to maintain her balance as she tapped him on the shoulder. He looked over at her, his dark hair plastered to his forehead, almost dripping in his eyes.

"Do you think that house is a good place to wait it out?" Maggie asked loudly, the now pouring rain made it hard for her to hear even herself.

Nick just nodded, his eye squinting through the water and his patch now drenched, he couldn't wait to get it off. Although he really wasn't sure how it looked these days, it was still very freshly bruised the last time he'd been in front of a mirror. They turned their bikes toward the property sharply; Nick almost fell off, his tires unstable on the slippery earth below. Maggie stopped just before the dirt turned to grass, shading her eyes from the rain to look up at the house. It was huge, painted a pale pink with white trim and shutters, but the forest green tin roof clashed slightly with the other colors. It had a nice porch with a rocker and bench, and to the three of them it looked like a mansion. Maggie dismounted the bike and the others followed, walking their bikes up to the edge of the house, where they set them down on their sides. None of them said it, but there was a mutual fear that the inside would be packed full of bodies. The image of a party being hosted inside the house occurred to Nick, everyone mingling and enjoying martinis in the formal living room. He imagined them all coughing and fainting, their glasses shattering as they fell to the hardwood floor; all of them dying at once. He imagined corpses decked in tuxedos and expensive jewels covering the floor inside the house. He could practically smell it. He shivered, and his skin broke out in goosebumps from the chill of both the thought and the rain. He couldn't wait to have a roof over his head.

Maggie was the first to walk up the red brick stairs to the house, her clothes completely soaked now, and she rubbed her bare forearms with her opposite hands. Her boots made a watery thumping sound with each step on the wooden floor of the porch. Nick followed her, still afraid but ready to get his shoes out of the sodden lawn on onto something solid. He made a move to walk up the steps when he felt ( _the dark man?_ he thought wildly for a moment) Tom tug on the sleeve of his flannel shirt. Nick turned to look into the flaxen-haired man's pale blue eyes.

"Nick? Are there dead people in there?" Tom asked uncomfortably. "Is that other man in there?"

Nick looked back, unsure himself for a second, but then he saw the door close behind Maggie, the screen so dark in this light he could no longer see her behind it. If she thought it was okay, he supposed he did too. Nick smiled crookedly at Tom and shook his head, gesturing for Tom to follow him inside. Tom smiled back, but still felt uncertain. It was hard to tell if this house felt like that barn he and Nick had hidden in during the tornado. Then, Nick disappeared behind that same screen door with a _thwack_ , and Tom reluctantly followed suit.

Maggie was pleasantly surprised to find no bodies on the lower floor of the house. She checked the rooms on the right of the front staircase, and Nick checked those to the left. Tom sat on the green, velvet couch in the cozy living room, a little more sure that this house was in fact a safe place to stay for a little while. But he couldn't wait to get to Mother Abagail's house. This house, he knew, would pale in comparison to the one in Nebraska.

Nick returned to the living room a short while after Maggie did with a thumbs-up, signaling they were all clear. She then took her pack into the bathroom she discovered off of the living room, changing out of her current soggy clothes into some fresh, dry ones. The air was very warm, but the rain had made her feel surprisingly cold. The storm had also reminded her of the dream a couple nights before, the pile of burning bodies, and Sean's dead, puffy face. She shook her head at the thought and got to changing into some jean shorts, a purple t-shirt this time, and some thicker socks.

Back in the living room, Nick took a book (a western, his favorite kind) out of his pack and began to read, glad to finally have some time to read again. Tom set up his toy car garage, the one he had carried since leaving Oklahoma with Nick, on the red rug in the living room. There was a big cobblestone fireplace on the wall in front of the couch and the rug, and Nick figured later, if the storm persisted, he could try to find some newspapers or something to burn in there. Just to make to easier to sleep. They all missed lights, and Nick doubted if he would ever see another working lightbulb or lamp in his lifetime. Tom tapped his leg, still sopping wet, but he planned on changing in the bathroom once Maggie was done. He looked up from his book to try and catch what Tom was about to say.

"Nick?" Tom said, Nick nodded so Tom knew he could see. "Maggie's a lot nicer than that girl we met before, huh?"

Nick smiled brightly and nodded. Tom went back to his cars and Nick likewise went back to reading about the cowboys of the old west.

. . .

After a long few hours of waiting, the rain still pattered warmly against the steel roof, and it was pitch black outside. Tom had fallen asleep in his sleeping bag on the floor in front of the fireplace, and Maggie and Nick had spent the past hour sitting on the couch reading books. Maggie had chosen _Dracula_ for that particular night, knowing she'd have a while to read. She missed having time to do things like this, just stop and rest. But she knew this was far from the end. They first had to get to Mother Abagail, and then Boulder as the old woman had told her in a dream the night before. Then what? Maggie knew that question was not yet meant to be answered, but it continued to gnaw at her. How would society manage to rebuild itself after the superflu? She sighed, blowing a stray strand of hair out of her face in the process, and tried to focus on her reading. The horror in the book was good fun, but Maggie only vaguely realized that the horror of her present situation was real. She didn't remember falling asleep, but later supposed that it was probably as she alternated between the fleeting concentration on her book and the questions that were now facing the entirety of mankind. At some point, her eyes must of gotten heavy, and she faded into sleep.

Nick looked over at Maggie intending to ask the time, but found her asleep instead, her head resting on the arm of the sofa next to her. He smiled a little and stood up, pulling her feet to the edge of the couch so she would be laying down and wouldn't be stiff in the morning, and covered her with her unzipped sleeping bag like a blanket. There were throw blankets around, but he knew she probably wouldn't want to be covered by a blanket that had once almost undoubtedly covered someone who was now dead. She stirred a little as he did all of this, especially at the sound of the sleeping bag being unzipped, which of course Nick did not hear. But, she never completely woke up. Nick sat on the floor with his back against the base of the couch, staring once again at the fire until his eyes felt hot. He rested his head against the couch and dozed, his long legs splayed out in front of him, and at some point he too fell asleep. So they slept, in the deserted house somewhere near the edge of Kansas leading to Nebraska, as they all dreamt.

. . .

Nick was back in the good place, and in the good place he could always hear. He could hear the way the hay underneath his boots crunched every time he took a step through the corn, he could hear the slight summer night breeze rustling the leaves of the stalks around him. And he could hear the music. The nearing sound of Mother Abagail's steel guitar washed over him, and his pace quickened. He had to get there, to the homeplace. He had to get them there.

( _You and all your friends.)_

When he dreamt of this place, he was always struck by the sweet smell of corn, and summer, and dusk that was in the air. The air blew his hair back just a little as he continued walking rapidly through the corn. He was almost there when he heard the crows. The arrogant cawing over him brought Nick's eyes to the sky. They circled above him, their dark shapes forming a mock halo over his head. He began to run but it seemed as though he wasn't moving at all. Everything was the same, and the birds remained over his head, but still his arms and legs pumped as he tried to get closer. Closer to the Mother Abagail and her guitar. While he had been close before, things seemed to be getting farther away. All of it. The clear sky above filled with thunderheads, and the sound of Mother Abagail's guitar got more distant the more he ran. The smell of the corn was gone, what replaced it was a stench that over the past few weeks Nick had become regrettably familiar with; the smell of bodies. He could almost taste them as the odor permeated the air. Images of the doctor in the car in Shoyo appeared fuzzily in his mind, and in the white dress. Eventually, he didn't know how long (it could have been a second or an hour), the sound of Mother Abagail and the guitar was gone. Only the cawing of the crows remained.

He turned around sharply, trying to get back to Mother Abagil, back to the homeplace. But the sound of the guitar never came. He felt a shattering inside himself, an emptiness that he hadn't felt since meeting Tom. He had lost her; he had lost everyone. He led them to the wrong place, so they left him to try to get there on their own. He wouldn't have anything left now. He was struck by a memory of the orphanage after it went bankrupt, the empty (slightly roach-infested) rooms full of toys that would stay there, unused for the rest of eternity. Or so it seemed to Nick then. He was the last one to leave, as they decided he was too old to be transferred to another orphanage at the age of sixteen, so they left him there. All the food was gone, so eventually he had to leave the empty building. But for a little while after everyone left, he thought about just staying there, waiting. He knew at some point he would starve to death, and he was okay with it. But soon enough the gnawing, ripping hunger broke him down, and he went off to nowhere. Things went from there, an odd job here, an odd job there, maybe some money once in awhile? He had managed to stay alive, but some days he felt like dying at the orphanage would have been better. How much of a life was he really living then anyway?

But things were different now, he told himself once again. He had people now, they were depending on him; Mother Abagail was depending on him. Maybe things would finally be good, he would finally be happy. And what had Nick Andros gone and done? He had lost the sound of the guitar. _Good going, Nick. Guess it's time to run away again_ , he thought to himself in the dream, aware that he had stopped running and was now walking at a leisurely pace. There was no point once again. He watched his feet as they stumbled over the hay, listening to the monotonous _crunch, crunch, crunch_ underneath him.

Behind him, there was a loud crack. He turned around again, looking back in the direction which he had been previously running. Through the scant stalks of corn he could see the eyes again. He had seen them many times before in these dreams, and perhaps once awake during the tornado, but each time he saw them the hairs still stood up on his arms and on the back of his neck, and he still always broke out in involuntary goosebumps. It was as though those eyes made you feel like you were on fire and as cold as ice at the same time.

"You lost it," the face ( _shadow?_ ) to which the eyes belonged spoke in the familiar, monstrous voice. "And you will, Nick. You'll get lost, and they'll leave you. Might as well end it now before you have to meet me in the desert."

Then the eyes laughed maniacally, and the shadow rose it's arms. Around them, all of the corn was set ablaze, an evil blue fire licked the thunderous sky above them, and the halo of crows remained. Nick felt the smoked instantly invade his lungs, and he started to cough. It was a deep sound, rattling his chest and racking his entire body as he doubled over. It made him question whether he had been infected with the superflu after all. He soon fell to his knees, still coughing as his chest burned. Soon, blood began to pour from his mouth as the coughing continued, and still the shadow cackled.

"Their blood is on your hands," the shadow bellowed.

The river of blood continued to pour from Nick's mouth even after his coughing died down. He would have coughed had he still been able to breath, but now his throat had swollen to the size of a pinhole, and blood still filled the space where air should have gone. The calling of the crows filled his ears, and grew louder with every second. Soon it was unbearable. His hands flew to his ears and he wondered why hearing had been a good thing at the beginning anyway. He struggled to scream, or at least to breath, as the caws pounded in his head. The blood still flowed from his mouth and dripped down his chin, and he could have sworn the crows were calling out his name.

. . .

Nick awoke to the smell of fire still in his nose, and Maggie's panicked face in front of his. It took a moment for him to register his surroundings, the fog of sleep still clouding his view for a minute. And it almost felt to him like he was still in the dream, that somehow Maggie had become a part of it and that was the new reality. These days, reality felt like a dream, so it wouldn't have surprised Nick much if things suddenly flipped. But, as he felt Maggie shaking him by the shoulders, his head lightly banging against the couch, he knew it was real. The dream was over.

When Maggie saw Nick was awake, she stopped shaking him, quickly glancing back at Tom to make sure the commotion hadn't woken him as well. She turned back to Nick, finally taking her hands off his shoulders. He still looked half asleep. She felt his forehead, checking his temperature against her own. Thankfully, it felt relatively normal and Maggie let out a sigh of relief. She left her crouching position and sat down criss-cross applesauce in front of Nick on the plush, red rug. She wondered foggily if there were any bodies upstairs, a thought she'd had many times since discovering the house. None of them dared to venture up the staircase. They may have been able to tell by smell, but they had all gotten used to it by that point. The smell of the air without the vague stench of bodies would be the abnormal thing now. She'd sat so close to Nick that their legs were almost touching. She rested a hand on his knee, still trying to reduce her heart rate.

"Are you okay?", she asked. "You started coughing, and it sounded like-I thought...I was worried you were getting sick. The superflu."

Nick smiled a little to reassure her, though on the inside he was far from calm, and took out his notepad. She raised her eyebrows, looking at him doubtfully. He told her about the dream, and about what the shadow, or dark man, or whatever he was had said to her. But, he skipped over most of the self-loathing thoughts and themes of the nightmare. He wasn't sure if he was comfortable enough with her yet for that. He ripped the note off of his pad with what he now realized was a trembling hand, then crossed his arms to hide them. She read the long note with furrowed brows, her left hand still on his knee. He noticed it skeptically, and felt his whole face heat up. This was not helping his thudding heart. He tried to breath deeply, in and out, in and out. That was by far the scariest dream he'd yet experienced. He thought about the lost feeling, the lonely feeling. That was arguably the worst part, matched only by the coppery taste of blood which was still vaguely filling his mouth. Maggie looked up with sympathy, running a hand through her long, messy hair.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to shake you like that, you were just coughing so loud and hard. It reminded me of the baby before..." she blurted out frantically then trailed off.

Her hand flew to her mouth and the shine of tears filled her eyes, she hadn't meant to talk about her past life to anyone. Maybe ever. But in retrospect, she figured there was no way around it. Nick just watched her, waiting for her next move. She sighed, placing both hands on his knees now, once again his heartbeat quickened. He was flustered, but tried to remain composed. He uncrossed his arms, resting his hands on top of hers as she looked away, trying to blink away her tears. When she looked back at him, a solitary tear fell out of each of her eyes, and Nick felt one gently plop onto his left hand. She took a deep breath and smiled half-heartedly.

"My brother was married, but then his wife and his daughter died in a car accident a few months ago. I moved in with him to help out, because he still had his baby boy. Like I said before, I was just a waitress, but any money was gonna help him out. Anyway, the baby caught it first and then my brother did. The baby was coughing the way you were before he died, and it just scared me. I thought everyone who's alive would stay alive. But I guess that's not true. I mean, it was silly of me to think that. It's just...so many people have died already," she said sadly, once again finding it difficult to maintain eye contact with him. She supposed she had been shy before, but now there was no way around looking at him when she spoke.

Nick took out his pad. He didn't really know what to say, so he just improvised. _I was in an orphanage after my parents died until I was sixteen. Then the orphanage went bankrupt, so I started wandering around. Eventually got my GED. But then everyone started dying, so here we are._

"Yeah...here we are," Maggie said with a shrug. She was only vaguely aware that the fire had now gone out, but she was comforted by the hum of the crickets outside. Nick's hands squeezed hers gently. She looked at him for a long time, and he returned the favor. He noticed the scar on her cheek and a freckle just below her right eye. She bit her lip, becoming embarrassed under his gaze. She blushed, as did he when he realized how he had been staring. He cleared his throat and she looked down, hiding her red cheeks. Then Nick acted on impulse, something he didn't do very often. But then again, he didn't travel thousands of miles to Nebraska to meet an old woman he'd only ever seen in a dream very often either.

He put a hand under her jaw much like he had done the first day he met her when he had cleaned the cut on her forehead. Maggie met his gaze, her heart fluttering in her chest. He leaned forward and kissed her softly at first, then the kiss deepened, Maggie putting her own hands on the sides of his face. He held a hand on the back of her head, tangling his fingers in her hair. Maggie wasn't really thinking, all she knew was that what was happening was good. Maybe things would be good again, maybe the little bits and pieces left of mankind could actually find a way to live again. It was the kind of thought only a kiss like that can lead to. She felt where this was going, they were going to have sex on a dead person's rug next to a sleeping Tom. At this thought, she pulled reluctantly away.

Nick immediately recoiled, thinking of how stupid he was for doing something like that. Especially after the mistakes he made with Julie.

"Not here," Maggie told him, her hands still holding his face. "But soon."

Nick cracked a small grin as they pulled away from each other.

 **Author's Note:** Aaahhh, finally some romance. I hope you liked this chapter! I myself am very partial to the dream sequences in _The Stand_ so there are quite a few in this story; I hope that's alright.

PLEASE let me know what you thought in a quick review below!

Thank you so much!

Peace and love.


	9. Chapter Eight

**Disclaimer:** _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Two:** _July 1990_

 **Chapter Eight**

On July 17th, they made it over the Nebraska state line. Maggie figured it was probably just her imagination, but something about the air felt different. Warmer not in the sense of temperature, but in feeling. The air was reassuring? Electric? She couldn't really find the right word, but she knew they were getting very close to Mother Abagail. It was the same feeling she got in the dreams, and similar to the feeling she got when she first met Nick and Tom, instantly knowing they were some of the good ones. Now, she knew there were more good ones. When she was first left alone after burning down the apartment building, she was half sure that she was the only one left. And then, when the first two encounters she had with other survivors were bad ones, she was half sure that she was the only _good_ one left. She was actually still vaguely wondering if she was one of the good ones, but she figured if Mother Abagail was talking to her, she must have some good in her. But, now that she'd met Tom and Nick, she knew there must be more good ones out there. At least, she _wanted_ to know that there were more good ones out there.

She also knew that time was moving differently now, but she couldn't tell if it was ticking away faster or slower. She had only known Tom and Nick for around five days, but it felt like much longer. And of course, she'd only known Nick three days when they'd first kissed. That would have seemed to her like an insane thing to do in the old world. Now, it didn't seem so crazy. There was usually some kissing near the fire after Tom went to sleep and the sun had gone down, but there was currently a kind of celibacy pact between them. Not that they didn't want to have sex, Maggie knew at least she _really_ wanted to have sex with Nick. But, the time was not yet right. They had both agreed that they would do it in private; it felt too wrong doing something like that with Tom sleeping right beside them. Maggie grimaced at this thought as she lay in her sleeping bag the night after getting to Nebraska.

She rolled onto her left side, facing the fire, and craned her head up. Nick was asleep, his hair brushing slightly into his eyes. She felt the need to brush it away, to wake him up and start kissing him again. But, she wanted him to sleep. And they had already done enough kissing for that night. Maybe that night he would have a good dream, or at least Maggie hoped he would. Both of them had been having bad dreams the past couple nights. One good thing, however, was that the so-called Dark Man had been given a human-esque name. Randall Flagg. _The crows are his_ , she thought ruefully and almost felt like laughing.

But she knew _he_ wasn't a laughing matter. The dreams hadn't necessarily been getting worse, but the fact that they were coming three nights at a time made them feel that way. She was almost afraid to go to sleep now. She didn't want to see the corpse of someone she'd lost; that's what it always was. They would appear to her somewhere, in some dead form, and tell her to give up now. The one she saw the most often was Colleen in the green dress. The dark man would always be there too, telling her if she didn't stop now, he'd meet her in the desert. A lot of this still confused her, but she did know one thing for sure: she was going to avoid the desert at all costs.

That night, past two in the morning, Maggie finally fell asleep. She dreamed of Mother Abagail that night, who told her they would be meeting soon. In the dream, she was again wearing that blue dress. In a way, she was tired of all the symbolism and visions. She just wanted to know. _What the hell is going on?_ she wanted to ask. But somewhere else inside her she knew it still wasn't time, they weren't to the homeplace yet. She couldn't wait to get there, to see Mother Abagail. To see that house in real life. She supposed when she got there it would probably still feel like a dream, but she didn't know. It had been so long since the old world had turned to the new world, it felt to Maggie like she was starting to forget some of the old things. Like what it felt like to sleep in a bed, to feel the air conditioning when you walked inside on a hot day, and to take a shower. That's definitely what she missed the most.

But, all that would have to wait. She still had to make it there, and _then_ they would figure things out. It hadn't yet occurred to her that the things of the old world might be things she would never experience again. She didn't want to think like that yet.

She was also beginning to wonder if they were ever going to see anyone new. They had been travelling together for five days now, and not another soul had been seen. But it's not like that was a bad thing; they were good. She didn't want to meet someone bad again. Hell, she'd had enough badness for two lifetimes already. To her surprise, however, they met someone new that very next day.

. . .

Tom Cullen, Nick Andros, and Maggie MacNeil met Ralph Brentner at around eleven in the morning on July 18th, 1990. They were biking on a country road in the town of Kearney, Nebraska, with old farms on either side. On the left, there was a corn field, putting everyone slightly more at ease. It was a stiflingly hot day, they were already almost through their water bottles. They'd have to stop soon to stock up on supplies anyway, more granola bars especially. God, Maggie hated granola bars now. They were still going to keep eating them, though. They had to. That's really what pissed Maggie off the most about those granola bars: they had to eat them. There was no choice. She was thinking about those granola bars when Tom first heard the car. He looked behind him, and saw a glint of light coming over the farthest of the three hills over which they'd just rode.

"Hey, look! Look!" he shouted. "There's something back there!"

He dismounted his bike abruptly, standing to the side of the road, just waiting for that car to crest the second hill. Meanwhile, Maggie got Nick to stop, knowing he wouldn't have heard Tom's yells. Her thoughts immediately went to the gun in her pack; she was thinking much more defensively these days. She shaded her eyes, waiting to see whatever the something behind them was. She heard something that sounded like a car, but it had been a long time since she'd seen a moving car, so she figured her ears may be deceiving her. She breathed heavily, the squiggly lines were rising from the pavement in the distance because it was so damn hot. Nick stood on her left, Tom in front of them. Then, the glint of metal stung her eyes as the car came leisurely over the second hill before them. Maggie's hand went to Nick's shoulder, and he looked over at her with raised eyebrows and shrugged. They all stood in silence as the truck neared, then stopped on the one-way road next to Tom. Tom didn't get close to the window, afraid the person inside might be similar to the girl that'd shot at them those many days before. Maggie figured she was the one best suited to go up to the old Chevrolet farm truck and meet whatever potential monster sat inside. After all, she had plenty of experience with monsters now.

She walked up a few paces next to Tom with her hands on her hips, the pack thudding against her back softly with each step. She peered in the window to find a large man with a straw hat. He had warm brown eyes and blue overalls on. There was a green feather bobbing in the brim of his hat.

"Well, howdy. Boy, am I glad to see y'all. It's been days since I've come across anyone else," the man in the truck smiled. Maggie smiled back, but was still not completely convinced he was good. "The name's Ralph Brentner," he said, sticking out his hand. Maggie shook it, smiling warmly now.

"I'm Maggie MacNeil," she told him, then turned around to find both Tom and Nick standing right behind her.

"Um, this is Nick Andros and Tom Cullen," she pointed to them as she said their names. Tom was smiling and bouncing on his heels a little, and Nick just nodded a little when Maggie pointed to him. Then he took out his pad and started writing.

"It's good to meet you; laws yes it is," Tom said, shaking Ralph's hand. "It's been a long time since we've met anyone new."

Ralph smiled, shaking Tom's hand back enthusiastically. Maggie could see the brown fuzz of facial hair around Ralph's cheeks and jaw. Tom himself had grown a full beard since having left Oklahoma with Nick. And Nick, well, Nick had never really grown any facial hair. Saying he had peach fuzz would be generous. Maggie smirked a little as she thought of this, it was something you only learned about someone you were getting close with.

"Well, it's good to meet you too, Tom," Ralph laughed. Nick handed him a note and Ralph read it with furrowed with brows.

 _My name is Nick Andros, but you already knew that. I'm a deaf mute. Sorry about that. But I can read lips. Tom is mildly retarded. And Maggie is just Maggie. We're on our way to Hemingford Home,_ the note read.

Ralph furrowed his brows, then grinned. "Well, I was headin' North. But I wasn't real sure why. I think I had a dream where someone who told me about Hemingford Home. That's here in Nebraska, ain't it?"

Nick nodded excitedly, his face lighting up. This man was good _and_ he had a car. What more could you ask for?

"Well, if you want, y'all can hop in. This truck is now headed for Hemingford Home," Ralph announced.

There wasn't enough room in the front seat of the truck, so Nick and Maggie sat in the back cab across from each other. They were both jittery with excitement. Sure it would still take at least another day to get there, but now they were really on their way. To meet the _real_ Mother Abagail. They were jolted backward when the truck first got moving, but from then on it was smooth sailing. Nick and Maggie used sign language mostly while they talked in the back of the truck. To Nick it was like they had their own little secret code; he smiled a little at the thought. Maggie giggled when he ran this by her, and he imagined the sound of her laugh. While he had never heard things in real life, he often imagined what some things might sound like. With the help of being able to hear in the dreams, of course.

He thought her laugh would be bright, but not too bubbly. She wasn't really bubbly, he thought, warm was a much better word to describe her. He imagined her voice low and soothing, but her giggle high and cheerful. They mostly talked about what it would probably be like once they got there. Would Mother Abagail recognize them? Would she know about the dark man? And if she did, what would she want to do about him?

Tom, meanwhile, was having a great time in the front of the truck. He missed just sitting down and having a talk. He couldn't really ever have a chat with Nick. And while Maggie was certainly good to be around, laws yes she was, she wasn't much of a talker. During the times when they weren't riding, both of them were usually reading or kissing. They didn't think he knew, but he had woken up a few times to see them making out with each other on the opposite side of the campfire. He thought it was nice though, it was good to see people still loving on each other after something like the plague.

But now he had Ralph, and as he soon figured out, Ralph was a chatterbox just like him. He told Ralph all about his life in Oklahoma, and about meeting and traveling with Nick and Maggie. And even though Nick couldn't hear, he was still real smart. M-O-O-N, that spells smart. He even mentioned how Nick and Maggie loved each other, or so it seemed to him. Ralph laughed heartily at this, glancing in the rearview mirror at the two lovebirds. It wasn't just the kissing, Tom realized as he thought it over, it was the way they would just sort of look at each other sometimes. And how Maggie knew how to talk to Nick without saying anything. Nick usually got real red in the face when Maggie talked to him, laws yes he did.

They were just leaving the town of Kearney when Maggie looked up to see a telephone wire covered with probably at least twenty crows. They stood in a dense line with their feet hooked around the wire, staring down at the truck with their beady eyes as it passed.

. . .

It was only two more hours before they happened upon Dick Ellis, a middle-aged veterinarian walking down the road. The now party of five stopped for the night in a park, sleeping under a shaded area behind the play structures. It looked old and dusty. The wooden shingled roof had a couple of holes, but there was something still instinctively comforting about sleeping under a roof. Maggie figured the day had been going so well, she might as well have a good dream to go along with it. She imagined this dream as they ate their granola bars that night.

Mother Abagail would be there on the porch in her armless rocker. The tire swing would be swaying slowly back and forth in a slight summer breeze. She'd tell Maggie how close they were, and how everything would be okay once they got there.

. . .

But, Maggie was wrong. It was not a good dream. It wasn't as gruesome as her previous nightmares, but something about it's eeriness made it almost worse than all the others.

There was a tall, snowy mountain, somewhere far away. It was a clear, brisk morning and there may have been birds ( _crows?_ ) swooping through the air. In the beginning, things were almost pleasant. Sure, it wasn't Mother Abagail, but it wasn't burning corpses either. Then, the sky darkened and thunder rumbled loudly through the peaceful scene. Maggie felt the familiar sense of being watched, even though she really wasn't a physical body in this dream. She was still there, and something else was there with her. Things were almost too dark to see when a eye appeared, opening from a non-existent lid on the side of the mountain. She realized dimly that the mountain wasn't really even there anymore, it was just dark, and the eye was the only thing left. The eye was red and piercing, and somehow it was looking right at her. It was like it was looking at her heart, making her feel nauseous and violated and cold.

 _Something's coming,_ she thought. She then saw a grin with yellowing, rotted teeth appear below the eye, in a space that had once been the mountain but now didn't really exist. _Did the mountain ever exist?_ she wondered disjointedly as the staring contest between herself and the eye continued. The eye was winning. She thought she heard the sound of laughter. Well, not really laughter but something a creature may use as a substitute for laughter. Then she knew who the eyes belonged to: the dark man, Randall Flagg.

( _You ain't seen the devil yet.)_

A crack of lightning struck somewhere in the distance, and she could she the sky flare with blue light. The grin laughed without smiling, and the eye didn't blink. Maggie didn't know what about the eye was making her feel so sick, but she woke up before she could figure it out.

. . .

The pain in her head was what woke Maggie. She sat up with a sharp intake of breath and looked around helplessly. For a moment she wondered where she was, and why she wasn't in her old bedroom back in North Carolina. The bedroom which was now long since burnt down, along with the body of her older brother. Then she remembered, her heart beating rapidly underneath the hand on her chest. Her eyes still adjusted to the darkness, but she could only see faint outlines of people in this light without a fire. She checked her watch, using the fancy little light that would no doubt die soon. It was past three in the morning. Boy, was she tired of waking up at these ungodly hours. She sighed, blowing up to get some of the hair out of her face. She used one of the hair elastics on her wrist to pull it back into a ponytail. She was getting sick of that hair, and those granola bars, and the fact that everyone was dead. She knew consciously that she only felt this way because of the dream and the fact that the sun was still a few hours from rising, but she just hated her life for a minute.

She knew the only reason she hadn't killed herself after Sean's death was the dreams of Mother Abagail, and she supposed she was glad she hadn't. But sometimes she wondered. She felt the more looming sense of dread each time she had a bad dream, and she knew the badness wasn't over. She felt angry. Enough people had died already, what did there need to be more? Why was it necessary?

But she knew the answer to these questions already. There were still bad things happening even though the plague was over, and it was their job to stop the bad things. The dark man, he was the problem. He was the bad thing. But, it was easier to be angry if she pretended she didn't know that. She sighed again, this time in defeat as opposed to aggravation. And she realized she was crying, or had been. Her cheeks had wet streaks running from her eyes to her jaw, and some running down her neck even. She wiped them away hastily.

She got out of her sleeping bag, crawling to her left towards Nick. She knelt on her knees next to him. He was sleeping on his side with his back to her, she shook his shoulder just as she had the night he was coughing. That had been a nightmare in itself. What if they came down with delayed cases of superflu? What if it had mutated somehow? That was definitely towards the top of her now miles long list of fears. Nick almost jolted awake, jumping slightly then turning towards her to lie flat on his back. He could barely see in this light, even with his good eye. But, when he saw Maggie leaning over him, he thought the worst. _Someone's dead!_ his mind rang, now pumping horrible scdnarios out at full force.

"It's okay, Nick," he saw her say now that his eyes were adjusted. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

He sat up, and she sat in front of him. It was much like the way they were sitting in the living room of the old house the first time they'd kissed, that too now seemed like years ago to Nick.

" _Did you have a nightmare?"_ he signed. Writing notes would be too hard in the night. He too, had been having a bad dream. But it wasn't very clear. He vaguely remembered a forest with incredibly tall trees, and a large red eye. He hadn't been long enough for him to figure it out, but he remembered it felt bad. He felt sick to his stomach even thinking about the eye.

"Yeah. But, it's just...I wanted to ask you something," she said apprehensively.

He shrugged amiably, as if to say: " _Shoot."_

"Do you believe in God?" she asked.

He furrowed his brows, wondering what had prompted the question. After a moment's hesitation, he shook his head.

" _Do you?_ "

Maggie sighed. "I don't know. I used to. I mean, before my mother died we used to go to mass every Sunday. We were good Irish Catholics. But then, everything got fucked up. In fact, they got fucked up a few times. I mean, I believe in something. I think it's easier for me to think that all the people who've died have gone to heaven or something now. But, I don't know if I believe in a guy in a white robe with a long beard. I think that everything happens for a reason, so I guess I believe in destiny. But God? I'm not sure anymore. I suppose you could say I believe in _something_ ," she said.

She didn't really know why that eye had made her want to talk to Nick about God, but it did. She almost felt like she believed in a God again, more than she had before the plague. But there was another part of her that had decided there was no reason for anything. That things just happened and then you died and you were dead. It was a cynical way to think, but with everything that'd happened, she almost felt like she was kidding herself if she didn't keep that thought in mind.

" _Are you alright?"_ Nick signed with his eyebrows raised. " _Did something happen?"_

Maggie nodded sadly, her eyes filling with tears. She was so tired of crying in front of him. "I just- I wish we were there already," she croaked. "I want to have a home again."

Nick nodded back, also getting teary-eyed. He cracked a crooked grin and took her hands in his. She smiled a small smile back, blinking away her tears and blowing out a shaky breath.

"We're almost there," she said quietly, reassuring Nick and herself. He nodded, putting a hand on the back of her neck and leaning forward to kiss her forehead.

They sat for a minute, just calming down, feeling better. Nick watched her as she looked to the side, still blinking away the last of the tears in her eyes. A few had rolled down her cheeks. She looked back at him and smiled. He had decided over the past couple days she had one of the best smiles he'd ever seen. She just went for it, she was the kind of person that just smiled with all the smile they had in them. He took her face in his hands and wiped the stray tears from her cheeks with his calloused thumbs. He grinned, letting his hands drop to his lap and he continued to look at her. Nick didn't mouth words often, but then it felt like the appropriate time. He took his right hand out of her left, signing _I love you_ and also mouthing it for emphasis.

Maggie's smiled widened, her eyes glittering in the dim light of the early morning. " _I love you too,"_ she mouthed back. She knew noise wasn't necessary.

She leaned forward, kneeling in front of him. She put her palms of the knees of his jeans, kissing him tenderly. Once again, the kiss deepened. Maggie was lying on top of Nick, straddling him as he laid on his sleeping bag while they continued to kiss. She felt him smile in the kiss and she smiled back, listening to the cicadas buzz and the crickets chirp. It made her feel warm and whole. But, Nick pulled out of the kiss, looking at her as he propped himself up with his elbows. She looked at him in confusion and disappointment, and he tilted his head towards the rest of the people sleeping underneath the wooden roof. Maggie smiled a little as she put her head down in defeat.

"Right," she said as she got off of him. He put his head back down, assuming all he'd have to do that night was sleep. Maggie sat on her knees off of the sleeping bag on the cold, concrete floor of the roofed platform.

" _Soon,"_ Nick signed as he turned his head to look up at her. She put her hand on the side of his face, stroking his cheek with her thumb.

"'Night," she said slowly, and kissed him again. She stood up, walking the short distance back to her sleeping bag with a goofy grin and embarrassed blush on her face. For the moment, she had forgotten about the red eye opening on the side of the mountain, and the crows on the telephone wire. There was still love, even if there was also still a big red eye. And they were going to the homeplace to see Mother Abagail. These thoughts comforted her as she laid in her sleeping bag, still listening to the hum of the insects around her. Not long after, she fell into a rare, dreamless sleep.

 **Author's Note:** Alright, we're getting close to the end of part two! This isn't the end, mind you, but close. I hope everyone is enjoying it. Once the gang makes it to the Boulder Free Zone, things are obviously going to take a different turn. But, I hope the journey so far has been good for everyone!

I am SO sorry this was a day late. I tried to post last night and my computer was apparently not on board with that plan.

PLEASE review to let me know what you think so far.

Peace and love.


	10. Chapter Nine: Part One

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Two:** _July 1990_

 **Extra Disclaimer** : Many of Mother Abagail's lines throughout the three parts of this chapter are taken directly from the book. I tried writing her, but I ultimately felt more comfortable leaving her the way she was. Above all else I wanted to maintain the integrity of her character, especially in her introduction. In later chapters, Mother Abagail's dialogue is mostly original. I will be sure to let you know if otherwise.

 **Note:** This chapter was so long, it will be posted in three parts! So, please stayed tuned for my author's note and massive apology for not posting in forever until the end of Chapter Nine: Part Three. (I'll say it in advance: I'm so sorry!)

 **Chapter Nine:** Part One

The air was dusty as they rolled down the dry dirt road, and the light was golden with the start of the evening. The truck was packed, and they'd managed to fit four in front: Ralph, Dick, Gina, and Olivia. Maggie, Tom, and Nick sat in the back in the truck bed, almost vibrating with anticipation. As soon as they had started travelling that morning, they knew it was the right day. July 24th, the day they would meet Mother Abagail. Two straight days of thunderstorms had slowed them down. Even though they had a car now, the stopped ones full of dead people covering most central roads always blocked their way. And the rain only made it harder. On the day they'd met Ralph and Dick, they had still been on the other side of Nebraska, and there had been many more miles to cover. Far more than they had expected. Along the way though, they had picked up two more people. Olivia was first.

She was a redheaded woman in her late forties. They'd found her biking along the side of a country road in a similar manner to the way they'd found Dick. In an odd way, Olivia reminded Maggie of her mother. There was the bright red hair, of course, even though Olivia was Scottish and not Irish. But her voice was soft, and she moved with a grace that Maggie couldn't help but envy. Needless to say, she was a very pretty woman. With light brown eyes and a slim figure, though she was much shorter than Maggie. It was nice and refreshing to have another woman travelling with them, and Maggie felt a sense of comradery with her that she hadn't felt since even before the plague. The last woman she'd bonded with like this was Missy.

They'd found Gina only a day before arriving in Hemingford Home. They were sitting down for lunch in a park somewhere, none of them had bothered looking at the name of the town they were in for some time, when they heard screams in the distance. They searched for around forty five minutes when they found Gina, a girl of only six, lying on the floor of a barn down the road. She'd been sleeping up in the hay loft when she rolled off, breaking her leg in the process. She had been lying there for around six hours by the time she was found, screaming only when she heard the sound of their engine and their voices coming from the park. Gina, still very much a child, didn't really think of the people in the park being bad. She still only had a vague understanding of stranger danger.

Dick had managed to splint the leg. And though he was at first pessimistic about her prognosis, Gina seemed to have bounced back with incredible speed. Dick later suspected the tremendous loneliness was a large part of her previous lethargy. She was a small girl with tons of freckles, and long, wispy brown hair. Her china blue eyes were always filled with glee. She had taken a liking to both Ralph, in part due to the jaunty hat, and Olivia. It was strange for Maggie to have a child around again, and brought back several memories of her old life. But, she was a wonderful child, and having her around had proved beneficial to all of the people travelling in that old farming truck.

. . .

Mother Abagail first heard the engine before she could see the truck. She was sat in her old armless rocker on the porch, tired after a long day of preparations. There was one heck of a meal in store for those hungry travelers. She cracked a leathery smile when she saw the Chevrolet turning down the road, moving slow. She could see the people in the back of the truck, and tears instantly started coursing down her wrinkled cheeks. There were three. A thinnish blond man, waving frantically. Next to him, oh yes, there they were, the ones from her dream. And two in one load! In the middle was the boy who had just finished up learning how to be a man; dark hair, high forehead, narrow face. He waved in a similar manner to the blond man with the beard. Last, a tall woman with a willowy figure and long, reddish blond hair cascading down her back. She did not wave, just looked, a hand covering her mouth in disbelief. She was the woman with the scar on her cheek, Mother Abagail knew. She had dreamed of that woman just the night before.

"Praise God for bringin' em through," she muttered, tears still slipping from her eyes behind her steel-rimmed spectacles. "My Lord, I thank You so."

The pickup jostled into the yard. Mother Abagail saw the driver of the truck was wearing a straw hat with a blue velvet band, and a big green feather sticking out from it.

" _Yeeee-haw_!" the man with the hat shouted, waving. "Hi there, Mother! They said you'd be here, and here you be! _Yeee-haw_!" He honked the horn cheerfully, stopping the truck a few feet to the left of the old apple tree.

Mother Abagail also saw a fiftyish woman, a man with a horsey face, and a little girl in a red corduroy jumper sitting in the front cab of the truck. The little girl waved shyly, her other thumb popped into her mouth.

The young man with the dark hair and the eyepatch and the woman with the scar jumped down from the back of the truck before it had even stopped, hand-in-hand. They caught their balance and then walked slowly towards her. The tall woman let go of the dark-haired man's hand and stepped shyly up to the porch, looking around in awe. The dark-haired man was looking around in a similar fashion at the bottom of the steps. He simply couldn't bring himself to believe they had actually made it there; they had made it to the homeplace.

"Hello Maggie. Nick," Mother Abagail greeted them, nodding. "I'm glad to see you. God bless."

Maggie and Nick both gaped for a moment. She knew their names. They both started to cry now, tears streaming silently down their cheeks. Nick came up the stairs to the porch, standing next to Maggie in front of Mother Abagail. He took Mother Abagail's hands. Mother Abagail turned her worn cheek to Maggie, who kissed it. Nick kissed Mother Abagail's hands and slowly stood up again. He took Maggie's hand again and squeezed gently. They looked at each other wordlessly, both still crying. It was unbelievable. They had got everyone there. They did it. Nick kissed Maggie's forehead gratefully.

After the dream in which he'd been coughing so hard blood was pouring from his mouth, he had begun to believe the dark man's words. He started to think maybe he would fail them somehow, and he would be responsible for everyone getting lost. But now they had Mother Abagail. Sure, they weren't out of the woods yet, but they were certainly making progress through it.

Behind those two, she saw everyone get out of the truck and make their way towards her. The little girl had her arms linked firmly around the neck of the man with the hat, who was holding hands with the fiftyish woman. The horse-faced man walked behind them solemnly, polishing his glasses on his shirt. Nick and Maggie were looking at Mother Abagail urgently, now standing off to the side so she could see the crowd of people they'd brought, and she nodded.

"You done just right," she said. "The Lord had brought you and Mother Abagail is going to feed you.

"You're _all_ welcome here!" she added with her voice raised. "We can't stay long, but before we do any movin' on, we'll rest. And break bread together, and have fellowship with one another."

The little girl piped up from the hatted man's arms. "Are you the oldest lady in the world?"

"Shhh, Gina!" scolded the fiftyish woman, looking back to Mother Abagail with an apologetic smile.

But Mother Abagail just put a hand on her hip and laughed. "Mayhap I am, child. Mayhap I am."

. . .

The meal was amazing. Maggie had almost completely forgotten the taste of anything besides granola bars and water. Mother Abagail had spent the day before her company arrived killing a few chickens, and baking strawberry-rhubarb pies. There were also endless cobs of corn, and while there was no butter, they substituted with oleo and salt. Everyone stayed mostly quiet, their stomachs being satisfied for the first time in over a month. Afterwards, they sat in the kitchen talking for a little while, and at some point droplets of rain had begun to patter on the steel roof. It was a warm, comfortable sound, one that made Maggie feel cozy and safe. It brought her back once again to the night in that old house when she and Nick had first kissed.

They were becoming more comfortable together now, occasionally holding hands in front of people. They never made an announcement or anything, and to everyone except Tom Cullen, it was always just a fact that Nick and Maggie were together. You almost couldn't have one without the other. They had become sort of a support system for one another.

One night, one of those after a day filled with rain, Nick'd had a nightmare about rows of crucifixes running along the side of some highway he knew was in Las Vegas. There were people hanging from most of them, and he knew in the dream that the dark man had put them there. He had awoken as the sun was rising, to find Maggie already up. She'd had the same dream. That's when Nick knew the connection between them was different than just a simple attraction or simple love. He felt as though he had known her before, or was always meant to know her. It was at times like that when he wanted to ask her about her scar, but he never did. It was small, but deep, and he wanted to know what sorts of things had happened to her before the plague. She always talked about the things that had happened to her brother, or her mother, or her sister-in-law. But he wanted to know what thing had happened to _her_. She was far too old a soul to have had a perfect past life. Of course, the things that had happened to her family had also happened to her. But Nick knew there was something more.

Maggie sat in a kitchen chair on Nick's right on the far side of the kitchen, across from Mother Abagail in her rocker. She still felt as though she were in shock, like she was living underwater. Things were moving slowly, and she had a peculiar sense of numbness. She vaguely heard plans for sleeping arrangements being made, as Ralph, Nick, and Tom Cullen went to go get a couple mattresses from a loft in the barn. But it was almost like she wasn't there. She kept thinking about the soldier, and about Colleen in the green dress. She'd seen both of them crucified in her dream a couple nights ago, but she didn't know why. Every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was the royal mummy soldier with a bloody hole in his sunglasses. And Colleen, standing in the green dress, with a maggot crawling out of her nose. Above those two crucified, she once again saw the red eye opening.

( _Dark man, dark man, dark man._ )

( _Laura better run._ )

She rubbed her temples, the voices around her muffled. Boy, was she getting a headache. She thought about telling Nick who she saw on the crosses in her dream, but it was too soon. It still felt too private to share even share it with him. Thinking about telling him made her feel vulnerable and weak. They just had to get to Colorado, she told herself, then things would be better.


	11. Chapter Nine: Part Two

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Two:** _July 1990_

 **Chapter Nine:** Part Two

"...that okay Maggie?" she heard someone say, and immediately perked her head up to find Olivia looking at her with worry.

"Pardon?" Maggie asked, clearing her throat as she tried to act naturally. She saw that everyone was back in the room now, staring at her. Nick's hand was on her knee, she looked over at him, his eye also fixed on her in concern.

"I was just asking if you were okay sleeping on a mattress next to me and Gina? In the living room?" Olivia asked slowly. Maggie looked as though she'd seen a ghost.

"Um, sure. That'd be great," Maggie said, running a hand through her hair and looking back at Olivia.

"Okay, well. Gina, let's get to bed," Olivia said, scooping the small girl into her arms. Gina's eyes were large and glassy.

"Tom Cullen's tired," Tom said, yawning. "M-O-O-N, that spells tired."

"Let's go out to the barn," Dick said. "A good night's sleep will do us all some good."

There was a chorus of agreeing noises, and everyone started getting up to go to their separate spaces. Mother Abagail's splitting of the women in the house and the men in the barn was not an accident.

"I wonder," Mother Abagail said from her rocker and pointed to Ralph, "if you, Nick, and Maggie would stay a bit, Ralph."

The three of them nodded, sitting back in their former seats. Once the others in the room had cleared away, a momentary silence fell among them. Mother Abagail was looking across the room at Nick and Maggie. To her, their faces seemed far too careworn for ones so young. For a man who couldn't talk, Mother Abagail saw that Nick had quite the presence in a crowded room. He sat there quietly, following the conversation. His face reacted to everything that was said, that one brilliant, expressive eye darting to whoever was speaking. Then there was Maggie, who seemed to be the opposite of Nick somehow. During the conversation, she'd seen Maggie look out the dark window several times, her expression troubled. As she looked at them, she felt a quiet sense of knowledge and completion, as if this moment had been simple fate. As if, at one end of her life there had been her parents, John and Denise Freemantle, strong, tough, proud. And these two at the other end. Young. White. One mute, the other scarred. Both looking anxiously from those careworn faces.

She looked out the window towards the barn, her vision lit faintly by the three Coleman battery lamps scattered around the kitchen. She could see her reflection in the glass, old and dried and used up. _And still my work is not done,_ she thought spitefully.

"M'am?" she heard Maggie say and looked back. Ralph was leaning against the doorframe, next to him in a wobbly kitchen sat Nick Andros. He was looking at her closely, with a pad and ballpoint pen in one hand. Maggie sat in the chair on Nick's other side, the her tired face illuminated by those eyes. Those warm, kind eyes.

"Nick says…" Maggie began, clearing her throat with a note in her hand. A faint blush stained her cheeks.

"Go ahead."

"He says it's hard to read your lips because-"

"I guess I know why," Mother Abagail said. "No fear."

She got up and hobbled over to the stove, there was a cabinet to the side of it. Inside, her dentures floated in a plastic jar, she'd taken them out earlier when they'd eaten. She fished them out and popped them in with a grimace.

"Lord God, I have suffered," she said balefully, shuffling back over to the rocker and plopping down into it.

"We got to talk," she said. "You three are the head ones, and we got some things to sort out."

"Well," Ralph said with a slight grin, "it ain't me. I was never much more than a full-time factory worker and a part-time farmer. I've raised a helluva lot more calluses than idears in my time. I was just the driver because I had the car. Nick and Maggie, I guess they're in charge."

"Is that right?" she asked, looking to Nick and Maggie with raised eyebrows.

"Um, I'm not so sure about that, m'am," Maggie said with a small smile.

Nick scrawled for a minute on his pad and handed a note to Maggie, who read it aloud: " _It was our idea to come up here, yes. But about being in charge, I don't know._ "

"We met Olivia about ninety miles south of here," Ralph said. "Three days ago, wasn't it?"

Nick nodded.

"We was on our way to you even then, Mother. Olivia was headed North, too. So was Dick. We all just threw in together," Ralph continued.

"But sometimes I get the feeling," Maggie said, "I think Nick does too, that people are watching us. Maybe they're hiding from us. I think everyone is still a little in shock from everything that's happened. If there was only a couple of us, I think it would be different. Groups sort of scare people off, I guess."

Mother Abagail nodded. "Why did you come here?" she asked, staring at Nick and Maggie keenly.

"I've dreamed of you," Maggie said. "Many times. Nick has too." She paused and Nick nodded. "Dick said he has once. Gina was calling you 'grammylady' as soon as we mentioned our plans to meet you. And that was miles from here. She even described this place. The tire swing was what she remembered the most."

"In the dreams, you told us to come here. You told Nick and I in our dreams to bring all our friends. So that's what we did," Maggie recounted with a faint smile, remembering that first dream back when neither Sean nor Finn was dead.

That was over a month ago, but it seemed like it had been a hundred years since she had last seen either of their faces. One of the nights they had stayed up together, Maggie didn't remember which one, they discovered how similar their dreams had been. Of course, neither of them went into the most personal details, but the general themes were almost always similar. Especially the Mother Abagail dreams.

Mother Abagail looked to Ralph, "You?"

"Once or twice m'am," Ralph said, shifting his weight from foot to foot and licking his lips impatiently, "Mostly what I dreamed about was just...just that other fella."

Maggie swallowed dryly, thinking once again of the red eye. She figured that was probably similar to what the soldier's eye had looked like after she shot him. She wondered vaguely if his body was still lying in that same spot on the floor of the convenience store. A pool would have dried under him, it would have darkened with age and have almost a black color now. The uncomfortable tension in the room was broken by Mother Abagail.

"What other fella?" she asked gravely. She already knew the answer but was afraid to hear somebody else say it. She had had nightmares of her own.

Maggie was about to answer when Nick put a hand on her leg. She looked over at him and he squeezed her knee gently. He looked back to his pad and quickly, in large scrawling letters, wrote another note. He circled the words three times and then underlined them. He got up and walked over to Mother Abagail's rocker, handing the note to her himself before solemnly walking back to the kitchen chair.

Mother Abagail felt a chill go up her spine as she read the crudely written note over and over again. She thought of the single red eye she'd seen one night, opening and closing by itself. The creature behind the eye, searching in a world of darkness now not just for one old woman, but for a whole party of men and women. And one little girl. She looked at it one last time before folding up and out of her sight, at those two words written hard and large: _dark man._

She absentmindedly folded the note over and over again, unfolding and refolding countless times, despite the swollen joints caused by her arthritis.

"I've been told," she said, "that we're to go West. I've been told in a dream, by the Lord God. I didn't want to listen. I'm an old woman, and all I want to do is die on this little piece of land. It's been my family's freehold for a hundred and twelve years, but I wasn't meant to die here any more than Moses was meant to go over into Canaan with the Children of Israel."

Ralph nodded slowly in sober understanding. Maggie dimly recognized the Bible reference from her churchgoing times as a child many years before, but she still wasn't exactly sure what it meant. It went over Nick's head completely.

"I started havin' dreams two years before this plague ever fell," Mother Abagail continued gingerly, the dentures were beginning to make her jaw ache. "I've always dreamed. And sometimes my dreams have come true. Prophecy is the gift of God and everyone has a smidge of it. My own grandmother used to call it the shining lamp of God, sometimes just the shining. In my dreams I saw myself going West. At first with just a few people, then a few more, then a few more. West, always west, until I could see the Rocky Mountains. It got so there was a whole caravan of us, two hundred, maybe more. And there would be signs….not signs from God but regular road signs, and ever one of them had something to say about Boulder, Colorado. So I'm supposin' that's where we ought to go.

"Those dreams, they scared me. I never told a soul I was havin em, that's how scared I was. I felt the way I guess Job must have felt when God spoke to him out of the whirlwind. I even tried to pretend they was just dreams, foolish old woman runnin' from God the way Jonah. But the big fish has swallowed us up just the same, you see! And if God says to Abby, _You got to tell_ , then tell I must. And I always felt like someone would come to me, someone special, and that's how I'd be in the way of knowin' the time had come."

She paused, staring to Nick and Maggie. Nick regarded her solemnly, staring soberly with his good eye. Maggie sat likewise solemn, restlessly rubbing circles on the back of Nick's hand with her thumb as she held it. _She's a nervous one,_ Mother Abagail thought to herself, _But she knows when to fight. And there's something about her..._

"I knew when I saw you two," Mother Abagail said. "It's you. God has put His fingers on your hearts. But He has more fingers than two, and there's others out there, still comin' on, praise God, and He's got a finger on them, too. I dream of _him_ , how he's lookin' for us even now, and God forgive my sick spirit, I curse him in my heart." She put her head in her hands, tears springing from her eyes and rolling down her face. When she looked up again after collecting herself, Nick was writing. Maggie sat with her legs crossed, her elbows on her thighs. She held up her head with her hands, watching Nick's hand move nimbly as he wrote. He handed it to her.

" _I don't know about the God part, but some force is definitely working here. Everyone we've met has been going North. Have you dreamed of anyone besides Maggie and I? Dick? Maybe Gina?"_ the note read.

Mother Abagail shook her head a little and sniffed, feeling a little more stable now. "Not any of the others here. But a few. A man who doesn't talk much. A woman who is with child. A man who comes to me with a guitar of his own. And, not to mention, you two."

"And going to Boulder is our next move?" Maggie asked.

"It's what we're _meant_ to do," Mother Abagail said kindly. Maggie smiled a little at her with a small nod, Mother Abagail smiled a little back. It was odd for Maggie to hear things she had been told in dreams being said in real life. Nick caught the smiles and nods between them, and thought of the peculiar way in which Maggie reminded him of Mother Abagail. They both seemed to _exude_ feelings of niceness and kindness.

"How much do you know about the dark man?" Maggie asked, now feeling a little more comfortable. "Do you know who or what he might be?"

Mother Abagail sighed. "I know what he's about but not who he is. He's the purest evil left in the world. The rest of the bad is little evil. Shoplifters and sexfiends and people who like to use their fists. But he'll call them. He's started already. And he's getting them together a lot faster than we are. Before he's ready to make his move, I guess he'll have a lot more. Not just the evil ones that are like him, but the weak ones...the lonely ones...and the ones that have left God out of their hearts."

" _Maybe he's not real."_ Nick wrote, though Maggie shook her head a little as she read it aloud. It was like how she knew Mother Abagail was real. Randall Flagg was real; she just knew. " _Maybe he's just the scared, bad part of all of us. Maybe we're dreaming of the things we're afraid we might do. People do plenty bad things after something like a plague."_

Maggie glanced over at Nick doubtfully after she read it, but then looked back to Mother Abagail. She didn't know if Nick truly believed that the dark man wasn't real, or if he was just in denial. She suspected the latter of the two. She figured Nick was just tired. They had finally got to Mother Abagail, and Nick probably wanted to get to Boulder and go about getting things back to the way they used to be. But were the old ways really the right ways? _Look where the old ways have got us,_ Maggie thought. She thought back to the crows on the telephone pole and shuddered a little. He was real, alright, and she was afraid if they didn't deal with him.

"You dreamed of me," Mother Abagail said in her raspy voice. "Ain't I real?"

Nick nodded, a slight flush staining his cheeks.

"And I dreamed you. Ain't you real? Praise God, you're sittin' right over there with that pad o paper on your knee and your lady right beside ya. This other man, Nick, he's as real as you are," she said, straightening a little in her chair. Maggie grimaced at the comment, she wasn't anyone's lady. No one owned her. It brought back memories of the soldier and those fools who tried to kidnap her back in Kansas. ( _Can you still call it kidnapping if the legal system doesn't really exist anymore?_ she wondered.) But, she shook the thought away. Mother Abagail was over a hundred years old, so things had been different in her generation. And there were more important things to be thinking about now.

"He ain't Satan," Mother Abagail continued. "But he and Satan know of each other and have kept their councils together of old.

"The Bible, it don't say what happened to Noah and his family after the flood went down. But I wouldn't be surprised if there was some awful tussle for the souls of these few people-for their souls, their bodies, _their way of thinking._ And I wouldn't be surprised if that's what we're in for.

"He's west of the Rockies now. Sooner or later he'll come East. Maybe not this year, no, but when he's ready. And it's our lot to deal with him."

Nick rocked back in his chair, his head up against the wall. He didn't know what to do. He had told himself that once they got to Mother Abagail things would be better, and everything would be worked out. But, now they had a problem that was maybe even bigger than the plague on their hands. He hadn't felt angry, exactly, after the plague. More just depressed and irritated. Now, he was angry. He had all these people with him, great people, who had already been through the storm. And that storm was one hell of a big one. They thought they were finally past it, but it turns out they're only in the eye. The second half was still coming, and it would be worse than the last. He longed for the days of drifting, the days when there was no one else he was attached to. He felt a large sense of responsibility for the people he was with now. And it was too late to employ his old strategy of never getting close to anybody. If you don't love anybody, nothing could touch you.

But things were so much more complicated now. They had Raph, and Dick, and Olivia. Not to mention the fact that they were now travelling with a child. One so tough she had gotten through the plague. There was Tom, who in a way he felt the closest with. Tom had been the first person to join him on this long, strange journey to Mother Abagail. Tom trusted Nick like he didn't trust anyone else, and Nick trusted Tom the same way. Then, of course, there was Maggie. He didn't even want to think about the possibility that something bad could happen to Maggie, but he knew it was there. Perhaps more so than all the others, because like Nick she had turned into one of their leaders. It had started around the time Ralph picked them up, people looking to Nick or Maggie for approval after they said something heavy. He was glad she was like him in that way, he didn't know if he could deal with all of that pressure on his own.

But, for the most part, he wished she was just another one of the lost travelers. He wished when they'd found her she didn't know where she was going, just aimlessly travelling North like the rest. And in a guilty way, he wished he hadn't met her at all. She was too good to be part of this mess, he didn't want to have to lose someone like her. _No_ , he told himself. _That's the old Nick talking. You can't afford to be the old Nick right now; maybe not ever again._

He thought of all these things over the course of a few seconds, and the room was still silent when Nick finally looked back at them.

"You'll see," Mother Abagail said. She'd waited to make sure Nick would be able to see her say this. "There's bitter days ahead. Death and terror, betrayal and tears. And not all of us will be alive to see how it ends."

"I don't like any of this," Ralph piped in. "Aren't things hard enough without this guy y'all are talkin' about? Ain't we got enough problems, with no doctors or electricity or nothin'? Why did we have to get stuck with this damn door prize?"

"I don't know," Mother Abagail said defeatedly. "It's God's way. He don't explain to the likes of Abby Freemantle."

"If it's His way," Ralph said in irritation, "why, I wish He'd retire and let somebody younger take over."

Nick ripped a note off the pad and handed it to Maggie. " _If the dark man is west, maybe we ought to pick up stakes and move east."_

Maggie shook her head patiently after she read it. "I don't think that's a good idea, Nick. He'll follow us, and then the people are comin' North to find us will get there and see nothing."

"Nick, all things serve the Lord," Mother Abagail chimed. "Don't you think this dark man serves Him, too? He does, never mind how mysterious His purpose may be. The dark man will follow you no matter where you run, because he serves the purpose of God. And God wants you to deal with him. It don't do no good to run from the will of the Lord God of Hosts. A man or woman who tries that only ends up in the belly of the beast."

"I think we're all pretty well into the belly of the beast anyway," Ralph said with a scoff as Nick wrote quickly on his pad.

He handed it to Maggie, she read it and hesitated. She didn't want to upset Mother Abagail, and she'd likely call it blasphemy, but Maggie decided to just rip off the band-aid and read it aloud anyway.

"What's he say?" Mother Abagail asked. Only then did Maggie discover she'd taken a few too many seconds while deciding whether to read it.

"He says…" Maggie began, then cleared her throat. Her pale cheeks burned red. "Nick says he doesn't believe in God."

Ralph's eye widened at this, waiting for an explosion from Mother Abagail. Old God-loving ladies didn't often take well to atheists.

Nick, meanwhile, sat calmly. He looked to Mother Abagail with a serene but expectant expression. He was angrier now, mostly at himself. What had he suggested? He'd suggested that they run. _Wait to go, Nicky on not being the old you_ , he said to himself. _What does Nick Andros do? He runs._

Mother Abagail only chuckled, her dark brown eyes twinkling. She got out of the rocker and walked over to Nick. She took one of his larges hands in her own, patting it. "Bless you, Nick, but that don't matter. _He_ believes in _you_."


	12. Chapter Nine: Part Three

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Two:** _July 1990_

 **Chapter Nine:** Part Three

Late the next afternoon, Nick hammered a large, hand-painted sign into the ground in front of Mother Abagail's jack-knifed porch. _Gone to Boulder, CO._ , it read. They had spent the morning gathering up their belongings, informing the ones not present at the previous night of the plans, and making the sign. This was after a lovely breakfast of leftovers from the night before, of course. Ralph and Dick had been out driving. First, they went the twenty miles to town and got an old CB radio. Then, they rolled around, hoping to pick up a signal from some other party with the same idea. Nothing. What they did get was a bunch of static, along with some inhuman gurglings when they were out near the East end of town. It vaguely reminded Ralph of one of his nightmares involving the dark man. They told Maggie about this when they got back about a half hour before they were set to leave for good, but she said not to worry. They'd deal with such things when they got to Boulder.

Before those two had gotten back, however, Maggie was sitting on the porch in a kitchen chair next to Mother Abagail. Nick was off filling some of their used plastic bottles full of water at the pump. Maggie was going to help him with the sign when he got back, but she was taking a break for now. Olivia, Gina, and Tom were off playing somewhere in the corn field. They'd brought Tom's toy car garage out there to play after getting bored of the tire swing. Little shouts of glee could be heard not far off, making Maggie smile a little each time the wind carried them her way. It was a beautiful day, not too hot but not too cold. Maggie had never left the East Coast before the plague started, and she was finding the midwest rather nice. The weather was warm, but not stifling, and all the flat land around them bloomed with wildflowers and soft grass. Maggie took a deep breath through her nose, taking in the smell of the clean air, and sat back a little in her chair. Mother Abagail sat dozing in the rocker next to her.

Maggie thought the air definitely smelled different now, and not just because of the bodies. It smelled fresher, and more pure. The answer for that was simple though, most of the humans were dead. The pollution had stopped, and the air was free of much except birds. She wondered if the plague had swept through all the other countries, but she figured it must have. It was airborne, it seemed, and people traveled everywhere these days. But of course, America was the cause. Surprise! A little gift from Uncle Sam!

"Are you a methodist, honey?" Mother Abagail asked softly from the rocker, breaking Maggie's daze. She looked to Mother Abagail, an ancient woman wrapped up in a shawl despite the heat and the long-sleeved dress she was wearing.

"Um, no m'am. I'm a Catholic, Irish Catholic. But I s'pose I'm lapsed now," Maggie admitted.

"I could tell you was a woman of faith when we were talkin' last night," Mother Abagail said, looking off into the corn. "I woulda guessed Irish too, with that hair and those eyes."

"Well, I haven't been to mass in years. My mother would take us there just 'bout every Sunday, but after she died, we didn't go so much anymore."

She thought of the way Mother Abagail had spoken last night. _God has put his finger on your hearts._ She wondered why. She was just a waitress who hadn't been to church since Nixon was president. If she'd known the way things were going to turn out, she probably would've gone to church a lot more. And she still wasn't even sure she believed in God, anyway. It was all just too much to think about now. She tried not to get ahead of herself. The next step was Boulder, and that's all there was to it.

Mother Abagail was about to reply when Nick appeared from the right side of the house, he bounded up the steps silently and smiled at the two women.

"Ready?" Maggie asked, Nick nodded. She stood up and looked back at Mother Abagail for a second. Mother Abagail gave the girl a small nod, telling her it was okay to go on. There was something special about Maggie, in the same way something was special about how Nick held such a presence in a crowded room. But Mother Abagail wasn't quite sure what that special thing was yet. She watched the two as they descended the stairs, going to make some mud and paint the piece of plywood with it. (Science had gone back at least 200 years in a matter of weeks because of Captain Tripps. Go figure.)

Mother Abagail looked back at the corn, rocking slowly in that old chair, and she felt an odd sense of reassurance. Those two kids might just be able to do it, to face the dark man. And she was further reassured by the fact that there were still more of them out there; the special ones. She closed her eyes, beginning to doze again lightly. She tried not to think about how in a couple hours, they would be gone. And she would never return to her home place. She had lived on that farm all her life, and though the land had been taken away slowly by the government over the years, she still had her own little piece of it right here. And all she wasn't to do was live out the rest of her days there, that comfortable corner just on the edge of the old world.

But it was the new world now, and she would have to leave. Tears threatened to be shed, but she turned her thoughts away. Her crying days had to be over now, there was hard work ahead, and there was no more time for tears. She thought of the weasels that had been stalking her in her dreams, and the big red eye opening in the middle of a big void. These thoughts made her angry, they made her feel like cursing her God. She as an old tired woman, there was not much fight left in her. Certainly not enough to fight that dark man. But she knew she had to keep her faith, not only in her God, but in those special few who were now meant to protect them all.

. . .

It took around five hours to reach Boulder, and by then most people in the truck were asleep. Save for Nick and Ralph. The back bed of the truck was pretty well full, with all of their packs, Nick and Maggie sitting on one side and Tom Cullen on the other. They had strapped Mother Abagail's rocker down to the sides of the bed and the back of the front cab with some old rope; Nick had discovered it when he was getting the piece of plywood for the sign behind the house. There were no teary eyes as they left the jack knife house for good, only wistful looks and hopes for good things in Colorado.

Nick was actually most excited for a house. He figured once they got to Boulder everyone would get a to choose a house to live in, and after they cleared out the bodies, maybe make it a nice place to stay. And, he was pretty sure both he and Maggie knew they were going to live together. It had been a long time since he'd lived with anybody, or even had a real home. When he was a little kid, before his mother died, he had lived in a trailer park with his mother. It was in Omaha, in the bad outskirts of town. He mostly just read and drew pictures, since the few kids that lived there never wanted to play with the deaf mute kid. Nick didn't really blame them, he wasn't exactly great to talk to. His memories of that place weren't as clear anymore, he hadn't lived there since he was nine, but the thing he remembered the most was the cat.

The old lady in the trailer next to them, a fat old woman with small green eyes, had a sickly cat who would sit underneath the trailer. It was bony, with mats of grey fur sticking to it, it hissed and howled at everyone who walked by. Nick, a boy of just six at the time, got concerned that the cat was starving or something. One summer day, when his mother was at work, Nick got a little piece of bread from their grimy kitchen and approached the cat. Obviously, this was not a good idea, but Nick figured it out too late. The cat gave him a deep scratch on the inside of his right forearm, all the way from the elbow down to the wrist. The scar was still slightly visible, and he cringed just thinking about it. That's why he'd always hated cats, and felt a guilty sense of pleasure that the plague seemed to have killed off most of them.

That's what was on Nick's mind as they passed a sign reading: _Boulder, 2 miles ahead._ Maggie's head was resting in his lap, the rest of her sprawled out on the bed of the truck. She'd laid down about an hour before. Mother Abagail had fallen asleep around five, with everyone else following at varying times afterwards. Then, it was just Ralph, who was driving, and Nick, who felt he needed to be awake to see them roll past the sign welcoming them to Boulder. It was dark out now, but it still had the faint brightness of twilight. He checked Maggie's watch, careful not to wake her. It read _9:47_. He rubbed at his eyes (he hadn't worn his patch that day, and even though his vision in the bad eye was still blurry, it seemed to be getting much better. Nick was glad that he probably wouldn't end up deaf, mute, _and_ half blind.), tilting his head upwards toward the starry sky. They could've just waited in Hemingford Home until the next day when they wouldn't have arrived so late, but everyone was anxious to get there, to finally stop moving. It would be nice to just stop and rest.

He figured it was about the right time to wake everyone up, they'd still have to find out where everyone was sleeping when they got to Boulder. _Boulder_. It sounded weird for him to even think. To think that they were actually going to be there. He shook Maggie's shoulder gently, and she stirred a little. Over the past hour, he figured out that she talked in her sleep. He had glanced down at her as he stroked her hair a few times, and noticed her lips moving a little. A couple times he had caught random words, and once he thought he saw her say, _Don't go there._ He smiled when he thought about the fact that once they got to Boulder they would get to sleep in the same bed, and _finally_ get to have sex. Make-out sessions were great and everything, but Nick was excited to take it to the next step with her. He had never felt the same way about anyone before as he felt about her. _Ugh, don't be so cheesy Nick._ , he thought to himself, but continued to smile and Maggie started rubbing her eyes. She kept her head in his lap, lying on her back. She checked her watch and then looked up at him.

"Hi," she said with a yawn. "Is everything okay?"

Nick nodded. " _We're there,"_ he signed.

She grinned widely and sat up, jostled only a little by the smooth road beneath them. There had only been a few stopped cars on this route since it was pretty much the long way, but it was still paved. She kissed his cheek quickly, then looked around at the tall trees which lined the road. Nick stood up shakily, then walked across to Tom. While Nick got to Walking Tom and Mother Abagail, Maggie stuck her head behind Mother Abagail's rocker near the window into the front cab.

"Hey, Ralph?" she said quietly. "Are we there?"

"'Bout one more mile. We should be passin' the sign any minute now."

"Alright, well, I think we should be wakin' these folks up," she said happily. She watched as Ralph nudged Olivia with his elbow.

"Hey, y'all. Wake up. We're about to be there," Ralph said.

Maggie let out a deep breath and stepped backwards into the bed. Tom was just waking up still, but Mother Abagail was wide-eyed and alert already. Maggie remained standing, leaning back against the side of the truck and keeping her hands locked around it. Nick stood next to her and Tom Cullen stood in the same fashion on the other side of the bed. Nick saw the sign first, pointing frantically towards it.

"Praise God, we made it," Mother Abagail muttered. She couldn't see the sign, but she could tell they were there. Maggie put her hand to her mouth, but said nothing. Nick wrapped an arm around her waist and put his head on top of hers, breathing a sigh of relief and exhaustion. Tom was practically bouncing up and down.

"We made it to the mountains!" Tom Cullen shouted. "M-O-O-N, that spells mountains!"

" _Yeeeeee-haw!"_ Ralph exclaimed, making Gina giggle.

Then, they were past it. The sign that read: _Boulder City Limit Elev. 5363 FT_ was gone, and they were in Boulder, Colorado. _A new home place,_ Maggie thought, welling up. But she did not cry, there had already been enough crying over the past month. It was a new beginning. She felt the love she had for all the people she had traveled there with wash over her. And for a moment, the dark man didn't seem like the biggest problem left in the world. The love that good people felt for one another, that was something the dark man could not take away.

 **Author's Note:** SO SO sorry that this story has been on hold for a month. My old computer has ceased to exist, but my new one has taken its place. And that means the story is back up and running! You should expect the chapters coming very quickly now. I'm excited to get the show back on the road!

Hope you enjoyed this latest installment! Mother Abagail has finally arrived! *cheers* This is also the last chapter of part two! Next, we'll be onto part three in the Boulder Free Zone! So, get ready.

Anyway, PLEASE review down below to let me know what you think of the story.

A _special shoutout_ to **SweetFebruarySong** for being so kind as to review all of the chapters! I can't thank you enough!

Thank you SO much for reading!

Peace and love.


	13. Chapter Ten: Part One

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Three:** _August_ _1990_

 **Chapter Ten:** Part One

By the end of the first week, almost everything in the former ghost town of Boulder had changed. It even had a new name, The Boulder Free Zone, or Free Zone for short. On the night that they arrived, Maggie and Nick's group of travelers were so exhausted that they didn't even bother finding places to sleep; they laid down in their sleeping bags for the last time in the Boulder Park. Mother Abagail slept on a pile of blankets in the bed of the truck. The next morning, the first order of business was choosing houses. Nick and Maggie found one on a residential street about seven houses down from Ralph and Olivia's. (The two had begun a romance during their stay in Hemingford Home, and time seemed to moved a lot differently now. Love was quicker and more desperate. The need for love was more intense than before.) It had been a bright, clear morning, and the sun was shining on the wilted flowers in the massive front garden of Nick and Maggie's house. That's how they knew it was the right one. Maggie loved flowers, but had never lived in a house that had anything which resembled a garden, and now she finally could.

The house was relatively small, but that made it cozy. It had a white exterior and a black shingled roof, but another striking feature similar to the garden was the house's door. It was painted a bright cobalt blue. The walls were all painted a light yellow, with nice oak hardwood floors. The door opened to a living room, behind which was a modest kitchen. There was a laundry room off of the kitchen, which seemed like a joke now that there was no water or electricity anymore. There was one bathroom in the house, off of the living room on the wall connecting to the kitchen. To the left of the living room, there were two doors on both leading to bedrooms. They had decided to use the smaller bedroom as an library. They both wanted to have a lot of books in their house.

The final major selling point of the house was that there were no bodies. It appeared whoever had lived there had died somewhere else, Maggie wondered if somewhere in Boulder she was going to come across the body of the former homeowner, but there would be no real way to know. There were a few pictures on the walls, with young men appearing in most of them. But they would be too far into the decomposition process to be recognized, and Maggie wasn't going to spend a whole lot of time looking at the faces of the dead bodies anyway.

"Probably college students," Nick wrote when they were looking at the pictures while taking a little tour.

"And one had a major obsession with gardening," Maggie said with a hollow chuckle. She didn't think she had wrapped her head around the sheer number of bodies there were going to be out there yet.

Over that first week, Nick and Maggie, along with the other new homeowners in Boulder, cleared out most of the old things and brought in their own. There was a nice Haverty's in town, and they got a lot of their new furniture from there. On the second day, while cleaning out the closet of their bedroom, Maggie found a polaroid camera on the top shelf. There were probably a hundred boxes of little film up there along with it, all empty. She took it off the shelf gingerly at first, staring at it in awe. Then, she stuck in some film. She slipped out of the bedroom to find Nick, clearing out the closet in what would now be the office. She tapped his shoulder then back away considerably; she didn't want the flash to hurt his eye, even though he was wearing his patch that day. Nick turned quickly, some old ties still in his hands. Maggie held the camera up with a grin. Nick nodded in admiration of Maggie's find.

"Well, go on, smile," Maggie said with a giggle.

Nick looked at her doubtfully, he wasn't so partial to pictures. Well, he couldn't actually place the last time his picture had been taken. But he dimly remembered it not being a good experience.

"Come on, Nick. I'm going to take your picture anyway, so you might as well make it pretty by smiling," she said with a sigh. Nick held up the ties close to his face and gave her a huge grin. She laughed, snapping the picture. That was the first of many, many photographs Maggie would take. She ran to the kitchen cabinet after the handsome picture developed, and wrote on the back: _July 27th, 1990. Boulder Free Zone: Day 2._

The night before Maggie took that first picture, she and Nick had finally gotten to have sex. Nick was not a virgin, and Maggie wasn't either. She'd dated a boy named Danny for around a year after dropping out of high school when she was first living with Sean and Missy, but then he had moved on to college and Maggie was left alone. Danny was her first boyfriend, and she hadn't dated anyone since. But everything with Nick was so much better than it had been with Danny, sex included. It was not rough or crazy like the movies made it seem, but intimate and tender. Afterwards, Nick was even more sure of the connection between them. He could have _sworn_ he had known and loved her before.

They had, however, used a condom. It was not until after that first time, laying underneath the cool sheets they had just picked up from Haverty's a couple hours before, that they talked about the business of repopulating the Earth. After that discussion, it was decided between that they would wait to have babies until after the mess with the dark man had been cleaned up, just to be sure. They didn't want to bring someone else into the world just to lose them. And then there was the flu. Would a baby survive the flu? Even if it's parents were immune, no one knew if that immunity would be hereditary.

So, they would wait. _If we're even alive to have babies after the dark man is gone,_ Nick had thought fearfully that night. Maggie had fallen asleep with her head on his chest, his left arm wrapped around her. They were both still naked. Things were definitely looking better now that they had stopped travelling, and there would be time to figure things out. But Nick couldn't help feeling afraid. Things were so good, that he almost wanted them to be worse so that when they got taken away from him, it wouldn't be so heartbreaking. His own mortality had also occurred to him, the fact that he might be one of those Mother Abagail had spoken of who wouldn't live to see the end of the dark man. He sighed deeply into the summer night air. He decided to wait until others arrived to Boulder, the people Mother Abagail called, 'the special ones.' Maybe they would know what to do. He felt more people really looking to he and Maggie now, waiting for answers or a plan. He didn't have one.

By the end of that week, Nick and Maggie's house had been cleared of pretty much every trace of the previous owners. They both got rid of things apprehensively, with a bitter taste in their mouths. It was hard to imagine someone's life being thrown out in a matter of a week. But the simple fact was, there wasn't really any other way. This was the new world, and people in the new world needed places to live.

As the week went on, a steady trickle of new people arrived in The Boulder Free Zone, and by the seventh day there, the population had grown to about 90, maybe even 100. On the morning of that seventh day, a Friday, Mother Abagail was elated when she woke up. Two more special ones were coming! They'd be arriving shortly. She dressed quickly and started making arrangements for the day, inviting Maggie, Nick, Ralph, and Tom over to her house for lunch. She did this by hobbling over to Tom's house (he lived next door to her now) with the help of her cane, and getting him to go tell the others. _After today,_ she thought, _only one more of 'em's got to come. Then we can get to the business of taking down Satan's imp._


	14. Chapter Ten: Part Two

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Three:** _August_ _1990_

 **Chapter Ten:** Part Two

The glass of the window pane was cool against Frannie's forehead as she watched the road go by. She was dozing, almost completely sleep, when Stu's hand grabbed her thigh. She bolted upright, letting out a small whimper of surprise. She yawned, looking at him with raised eyebrows, waiting for what would have to be one hell of an explanation. Ever since she'd gotten pregnant, she'd always been exhausted. But the constant travel, along with the dreams, had made falling asleep at all a huge challenge. And, now in her second trimester with an ever-growing fetus inside her, she could almost never get comfortable. She absentmindedly brought a hand to her stomach, gently rubbing the now decently visible bump. She was only around four months along, but she had started to show just as the plague began hitting the country.

"Sorry, hon," Stu smiled with a dreamy look in his eye. He was leaning almost completely over the steering wheel, squinting. "But look at that!" He pointed forwards, keeping his left hand on the steering wheel. She glanced nervously at his form, but chose to follow his finger.

Before them, a central town street sprawled. Businesses lined both sides of the road, which was densely filled with long stalled cars. Most, however, were pulled over to the sides of the road. _The corpses in those cars must've been the polite ones,_ Frannie thought, her nose wrinkling a little in disgust. She sometimes felt like she might simply faint from the sheer surreality of her situation. They got close to the sign which hung long ways from two telephone poles on either side of the road, like a makeshift gate. She had just enough time to read it before they past: **WELCOME TO BOULDER**. And written underneath that: _Stay awhile. Play awhile. You'll like Boulder._

The sign gave her the vague sense of nostalgia and sadness which was now constantly lurking just underneath her emotional surface, but decided to ignore it in that moment. She giggled much like a little girl, leaning forward to sit on the edge of her seat. "Stu! Oh Stu, we're here! We're finally here!"

"Yeah, darlin.' We made it," Stu said happily, but with a weariness that was also felt by everyone who had traveled with them. There were five cars behind them, some passengers including Harold Lauder, Dayna Jurgens, Glen Bateman, and Susan Stern. They had been traveling by motorcycle before meeting the group of women which included Dayna and Sue, but then there were just too many people. They'd picked up the cars from a dealership in some nameless town, and while it had been a struggle to get them going at first, they had started traveling a lot faster.

Frannie marveled at the town as they drove slowly down the center street. The sight of many folks milling about on that street delighted her many times more than the sign had. Stu turned left off of the main street onto one that was almost completely different. It was quiet...sensible. Sidewalks lined the sides of the road, and there were dogwood trees in the little strips of dirt next to them.

"You think this is the street she lives on?" Frannie asked, the answer already known.

"Yeah, she's here. I can feel her here," Stu said. He stopped in front of a mailbox on the left side of the street. There was path leading to a modest brick house. Frannie thought she could glimpse a crowd of people on the porch, including a wrinkled old black woman in a rocking chair.

"Ayuh," Frannie confirmed. "This is her."

They rolled forward, trying to find a parking space for not only their car, but the many following them. Frannie did indeed see the crowd of people on the porch, and she started to cry when she saw that they were waving. A word popped into her mind that she had seldom spoken since leaving Maine almost a month ago: _Home_. Eventually, they found a spot on the side of the pleasant road. Stu's arm was wrapped around Frannie's waist as they walked to the brick house in shock and disbelief.

On the porch, Frannie saw a few people, in the center of which Mother Abagail sat. There was a man with white-blond hair, hanging over the railing as he waved. Then there was a man with a straw hat and overalls; he looked to Frannie like a cartoonish caricature of a farmer. On the other side of Mother Abagail, a lean man with dark hair and an eyepatch stood, holding a pack of crackers in one hand as he waved with the other. Lastly, there was a tall girl standing next to the man with the eyepatch. She waved only a little but mostly just watched them as they walked slowly toward the porch; she had a small, knowing smile on her face.

Stu let Frannie walk up the steps first, a hand on the small of her back guiding her. He had been, let's say, _very_ protective of her since finding out she was pregnant. Frannie thought of the way Harold had treated Stu when they first met him, and the way Harold had acted so unaffected when she and Stu had told him about their relationship. Stu believed he was sincere, but he hadn't known Harold before the plague. The sudden change in character had left Frannie feeling uneasy. She glanced back to find Harold there, joining a line of people from their party which led to Mother Abagail's front porch. Maybe he had really changed. _People change all the time, Fran,_ she told herself as she came up the last step. Now she was face to face with, the one and only, Mother Abagail Freemantle. Frannie stood speechless for a moment, looking around at all the smiling faces before her. Her cheeks burned in embarrassment. ( _Say something, stupid!_ )

"Hello, Fran," Mother Abagail greeted kindly, "My name's Abagail Freemantle."

"I know," Frannie blurted. "Um-I mean. I….I dreamed of you. We all did."

"Well. How nice. I dreamed of you too, Fran. Tell me, how's that baby of yours doin'?" Mother Abagail asked with a smile.

"Oh! Just fine!" Frannie said, feeling a little light-headed from the shock. Mother Abagail had dreamed of _her_? That was a little hard to believe.

Frannie glanced around at the other people on the porch as Stu gently nudged her to the side. She hardly noticed, there was far too much going on for that. Stu began talking with Mother Abagail, crouching down to be on her level. The man with eyepatch smiled at her before popping a cracker in his mouth and munching on it. The tall woman next to him snatched the package in irritation.

"Would you-?" the woman said. "We've got company!" She gestured over to Fran without looking at her. The eye patched man pouted at the tall girl playfully. The tall girl just sighed, then looked to Fran.

"Sorry 'bout him. He's a little too excited that y'all finally got here," the tall girl smiled widely at Fran, making her feel a little more at ease. "I'm Maggie MacNeil. Fran, is it?"

The tall woman, Maggie apparently, shook Frannie's hand. "Yes. That's me! Fran Goldsmith."

"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Fran Goldsmith," Maggie said cheerfully after they broke hands.

"Likewise."

The eye patched man handed Frannie a note. She hadn't even seen him write it, but she guessed it was when she had been shaking Maggie's hand. She was just so damn nervous.

 _My name's Nick Andros. I'm deaf and mute. Sorry about that. But don't worry, I can read lips. Also, sorry about the whole cracker thing,_ the note read.

"That's okay," Frannie said, feeling a little more comfortable. Things hadn't been easy, in fact, they hadn't been easy at all. But now, Frannie felt a little more sound. She already had a sense of protection she hadn't felt before. It was almost as if Boulder had a big dome around it, protecting it from all the bad things and bad feelings.

The afternoon went swimmingly. Fran, Stu, and the others traveling with them all got the chance to meet Mother Abagail and tell her they'd dreamed of her. Just as all the others first arriving in Boulder had done before them. Stu, Fran, and Glen sat with everybody on the porch for a while after the rest of their party had gone to find places where they could finally rest. They all got to know each other over lemonade, just like good, civilized folks would have done in the old world. Everyone was happy that afternoon, and there was no mention of the dark man. No one even noticed the calls of the crows, a flock of which circled above the old brick house until late that evening.

. . .

On August 3rd, the final member of Mother Abagail's group of 'special ones' arrived in the Boulder Free Zone. Once again, Mother Abagail could feel that he was coming the morning before. In fact, Larry Underwood and party did not arrive until almost eight o'clock that night, but the special ones as well as Mother Abagail were there to greet him and his friends at the old brick house. Everyone got a chance to tell Mother Abagail they'd dreamed of her. Larry had too, but in a thick and awkward tone, as he ran his hand through his curly, dark hair. He was a tall man with dark skin, and his brown eyes were stormy. He had been a pop singer in New York before the plague, but he had no idea what even to call himself now. He was in disbelief that he'd actually gotten them there, after all that had happened with Rita, and his motorcycle, and Nadine, of course.

Nadine's introduction to Mother Abagail had too been a strange one. Mother Abagail knew as soon as she started up the steps that she was not like the others. She was graying, Mother Abagail could see. Her black hair was not peppered with silver, but instead adorned with long, shocking strands of white. And Mother Abagail could almost see the aura of unkindness radiating off of her, glowing in the dim light.

"Who's this woman who goes?" Mother Abagail asked defensively as Nadine Cross walked up the front steps, her hand on the shoulder of a small boy. The crowd of happy travelers gathered in the yard all looked up, stopping their claps on the back and high fives. Larry looked up instantly as he was shaking hands with Stu.

"Hello, Mother Abagail," Nadine said smugly, hiding the sense of utter revulsion she felt towards the old woman. "I dreamed of you."

"Did you?" Mother Abagail asked gruffly, eyes locking with Nadine's. She could feel him in that woman, the Devil's Imp. She was one of his talismans somehow, and Mother Abagail wondered wildly why someone like that would come to the Free Zone.

"Yes. Yes." Mother Abagail continued, narrowing her eyes, "I know who you are now."

"Oh really?" Nadine asked, her eyebrows raised in mock, condescending surprise.

"I'm Nadine Cross. And this is Joe," Nadine said, gesturing to the boy beside her. He could barely contain himself; he was so excited to see her. The formerly feral boy had just begun developing language again.

"I don't think his name's Joe anymore than mine's Penelope," Mother Abagail retorted, a bite in her voice. "And I don't think you're his mom."

"What's your name, chap?" Mother Abagail said sweetly as she looked down at the little boy. His dark, almond-shaped eyes went from slight shyness and fear to total joy. He bounded up the steps and hugged Mother Abagail.

"Oh, he won't tell you. I found him when he couldn't speak a word, I don't think he even remembers his real name," Nadine explained in a high and mighty voice. She glanced up at Larry, who had gone back to mingling with the others on the porch. "But we call him J-"

" _Leo!_ " the boy shouted, his face lighting up with the realization. "Leo Rockaway! That's my name! That's me! I'm Leo!"

In that moment, Nadine was forgotten. Mother Abagail continued to chat with the thrilled little boy. Larry was talking solemnly with the people on the porch, and Lucy, Larry's apparent new love interest, stood next to him. Nadine felt lonely, and used up. She turned with her head down, pushing her way through the crowd to the sidewalk. Then, that creeping sensation came to her, giving her goosebumps and making the hairs on the back of her neck to stand on end.

 _Someone's watching me._

She turned her head to the left sharply, towards one of the dogwood trees embedded in the sidewalk. Behind the tree, staring at her with great intensity, she saw the hungry eyes of Harold Lauder.

. . .

After all, Mother Abagail was a _very_ old woman. So, soon after Larry Underwood's arrival, everyone vacated Mother Abagail's residence to let her get some rest. Nick and Maggie invited the group of 'specials' (Maggie hated it when Mother Abagail called them that, it made them sound arrogant, or too prideful. It was calling on yourself 'the chosen one', it sounded far too cocky for Maggie's liking. In fact, most names for them sounded too cocky in Maggie's opinion.) back to their home on Baseline drive. They would have to get Larry up to date, and then really get to talking. It was time to get serious.

They were already well on their way to serious, but now they could all talk as a group for the first time. To Maggie it felt as though a kind of a circle was closing; they were getting stronger. They were no longer just a group of weary travelers, dreaming of an old black woman and a big, dark man. They were becoming strong as a unit, and Maggie felt the dark man might be scared. She knew that _he_ knew where they were. That red eye saw everything. And then, of course, there were the crows. She had seen plenty since they'd gotten to Boulder, but she still wasn't really sure what the hell was up with those.

Over that past week and a half, along with fixing up the house, she had gone with Nick several times to the old power plant. That was one of their first orders of business; getting the power back on. Brad Kitchener, an old man with an impressive white mustache and coke bottle glasses, had been an engineer. He was sort of selected to be the one getting things up and running again.

( _Dylan goes electric._ She thought with an amused smile, which quickly turned bittersweet and melancholy.)

They had a whole crew of people down there, and it looked as though the lights would come back on sometime in the next couple of weeks. Sure, they had candles and batteries, but there was something about flicking a switch that everyone missed. It would be a symbol that things might actually get better, not back to normal necessarily, but they weren't completely out of luck. The scattered bones of society that the plague had left behind might, just might, be able to be assembled into a skeleton again. There were so many people in the Free Zone now, people who were counting on them.

The water was much closer to being turned back on, everyone suspected it would only be a couple more days. And that was at most. Everything was happening so fast, and Maggie sometimes couldn't believe it. They were going to be pretty much just like the old world, except with less people and better morals. But were they _really_ all that better now? Had the experience changed humanity all that much anyway? Maggie didn't know if it had, but she hoped for everyone's sakes that mankind had learned at least _something._

Nick felt better now, at least a little bit. Things were moving along, getting things back in order. But, there was still that lingering, gnawing thing in the back of his mind: _dark man._ He had chosen to ignore those two words until the last one of the five Mother Abagail had dreamed of arrived in Boulder. And now that the time had come to deal with that dark cloud which hung silently over all of them, Nick Andros was petrified. He had the sneaking, dreadful feeling that something bad was coming up soon. Something about a closet? Nick sighed heavily as they walked back. He felt like he was retrogressing, back to the beginning of the summer. When he was having to guess what the visions he had meant, or if they meant anything at all.

Maggie's hand squeezed Nick's gently when she saw his chest heave deeply. They were walking up the front walkway of their home. As she opened the door with him following behind her, (nobody locked their doors in the Boulder Free Zone. Except, of course, Harold Lauder.) she glanced over her shoulder and gave him a questioning look. But, he just shook his head.

Everyone sat with glasses of lukewarm lemonade clutched in their hands. They were gathered in Nick and Maggie's living room, sitting in various chairs or non-chairs. Nick had his back against the yellow wall, to the right of the small fireplace. Maggie sat on his left, and he had his pen and pad at the ready.

"You guys have sure got a lot of pictures, huh?" Frannie said, marveling at the photographs which were taped up on the walls, almost covering the one with the fireplace. So far, Maggie's favorite was one of Nick and Tom. It had only been a day before Frannie and Stu's arrival, and Tom came over to their house for lunch. Nick and Tom sat across from each other, eating peanut butter sandwiches. Maggie snapped the shot, with Nick doing the same goofy grin he did in most of her photos, Tom giving a cheerful thumbs-up. The relationship between Tom and Nick reminded her oddly of the one she'd had with Sean, and it made her feel almost sick with grief to think such things. Maggie was beginning to believe that some wounds just never heal. They stay just below the surface, ready to strike.

"Yeah," Maggie said with a small smile. She knew Frannie was trying to avoid the real subject. "I found a camera in one of the closets, and now we've got a lot of photos."

Frannie nodded, and an awkward silence ensued. Larry cleared his throat, and put his hand on Lucy's thigh. She smiled sadly at him, her brown eyes watery.

"So. Are we gonna talk about him?" Larry asked, his New York accent still _very_ thick.

"I s'pose we ought to," Ralph said softly, scratching at the stubble on his face. Maggie felt Nick nudge her, handing her a note. _Committee_ , it said. She nodded at him and then turned to the group.

"Lately, we've been thinking that we should make a committee to sort of...fix the little problems we got right now in Boulder. And of course, our big problems like this Flagg guy."

"Yeah, actually we were talkin' about havin' a meeting to select that committee. Y'know, just so the people will know what's goin' on," Stu said from his place in the big brown chair. Frannie was curled up in his lap.

"Do you think we have time for that?" Larry asked uncertainly. "He's already got a whole group of people behind 'im. And who knows what they got planned?"

"Well, what do you suggest we do, Larry?" Glen asked a little defensively, but in a calm fashion. He had been a philosophy professor in the old days, and was considered a vital asset to the impending committee. "Go visit Flagg on his doorstep with a basket of fruits? 'Hey, Flagg, don't bomb us alright?' I think we have to look at this with, dare I say it, a less diplomatic point of view."

"Hey, I'm not saying we go try and make peace with him or anything, but my point is that we can't just wait around when he could be doing something big," Larry said.

"And, _my_ point is, we need to have a plan first," Glen retorted.

"Or he'll crucify us," Stu said with a wistful look. That was the dream that he'd had most often. There was a momentary silence as everyone remembered. There had been several names for him in everyone's dream, Maggie had discovered. She had heard the dark man, and Randall Flagg most often. But, there had also been the walkin' dude, and the hardcase. Harold had even called him the big man once. But, after one conversation, Maggie had decided to avoid Harold Lauder anyway. Nick ripped off a scrawly note and Maggie read it aloud.

"Both points are good points. But, I agree with Glen that we just need to sit down and do some serious planning. Now, Mother Abagail said she didn't think Flagg was going to come for us until at least the end of this year, and maybe even sometime in the next. So, I think we should wait until the first real meeting of the committee to decide anything. For now, I think we should just all form ideas separately. Then, we can propose them to one another in a more civilized fashion."

Everyone subsequently agreed, and after another half hour of chit-chat, everyone decided to get home. There was a lot to be done still in the Free Zone before they could really figure things about about the Dark Man, or even _establish_ the committee in the first place. Larry looked up towards the cloudy, dark sky as they walked down the road, in search of a temporary place to sleep. It had been too busy of a day to find that earlier. As he glanced upwards, he thought for a second that he'd seen a giant red eye above the house. He only registered this after looking away for a moment, and when he looked back, there was no eye. Only dimly lit clouds and the sound of the wind. He thought of telling Lucy, but decided against it. _Probably just my imagination,_ he reassured himself, shivering anyway.


	15. Chapter Ten: Part Three

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Three:** _August_ _1990_

 **Chapter Ten:** Part Three

Nick looked out at the moon-bathed sidewalk through the living room window on the evening of August 5. The water was back on. It was only three days until the first big meeting of the citizens of the Boulder Free Zone, the signs had just been posted the day before. They smelled strongly of mimeograph ink, printed on thin sheets of yellowing old paper. All over town there were flyers reading:

MASS MEETING!

REPRESENTATIVE BOARD TO BE NOMINATED AND ELECTED

8:30 P.M. August 8th, 1990

Place: Canyon Boulevard Park and Bandshell if FINE

Chautauqua Hall in Chautauqua Park if FOUL

REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED FOLLOWING THE MEETING

Ad Hoc Committee

Glen Bateman

Stuart Redman

Fran Goldsmith

Ralph Brentner

Nick Andros

Maggie MacNeil

Susan Stern

Larry Underwood

Ralph had started working on the printing machine only a couple of days after arriving in Boulder, this after he established a permanent radio station in the Free Zone. Nick liked Ralph a great deal, and not just because of his kind personality or his now famous hat. Ralph didn't think he was an idea man, but he was. He was very keen on how things worked, how to put the small pieces together to make something big. Nick thought of all of them, the ones Mother Abagail had dreamed of, but also those others who had emerged as leaders since the plague had started.

There was Glen Bateman, the first man Stu Redman had come across after leaving the plague center in Vermont. He was a short balding man in his late sixties, with a raging case of arthritis in both hands. He was from New Hampshire, married for twenty years. But his wife had died two years before the superflu hit. Along with Susan Stern, a woman with frizzy blond hair and a strong jaw. She had come across Stu and Frannie's party when traveling with a group of women. She had been the head of the group at the time, and was now living with Brad Kitchener.

Nick felt an odd sense of unity and belonging between all of the people on the Ad Hoc Committee, pulled together by Mother Abagail after a series of such unfortunate events. This gave Nick an eerie feeling, like they had all been roped into something much bigger than them. Something they couldn't escape and didn't choose. Though he still thought himself an atheist, there were some things he was beginning to question.

Mother Abagail was an obvious reason he was starting to question if God _did_ exist after all, or something like God as Maggie believed. But something that had really started to nag at him were the bodies. Sure, there were probably a few hundred scattered around Boulder, but that was all. There weren't thousands or tens of thousands as they'd all expected. It seemed that at some point during the onset of the plague, everyone in Boulder had skipped town. Maybe in search of a safe place, maybe just in a state of utter delirium from their high fevers. Whatever the case, Mother Abagail had brought them to the one city in all of America that wasn't overflowing with bodies. That was really what was starting to make Nick wonder where Mother Abagail got her information. And sometimes, it seemed Maggie knew things. Nick had seemed to recall Maggie mentioning Boulder specifically before they even got to Mother Abagail.

Another thing that had changed in Boulder Free Zone recently: the dreams were gone. The citizens of the Zone were no longer restlessly tossing and turning in the midst of dark visions. Things had seemed to completely stop on the dream front when Larry Underwood showed up, and the group of specials were altogether in Boulder. Except for Maggie. Nick had awoken the past few nights, from peaceful sleeps, to find Maggie already awake. She would be sat up in bed reading; _To Kill A Mockingbird_ was the current novel. She would tell him she'd been awake for hours. The morning of August 5 had been particularly startling for Nick.

It was early, around half past six, and Nick was still struggling to crawl out of sleep. He sat up lazily, rubbing at his eyes. (He no longer needed the patch. He had to wear sunglasses on especially bright days, but that was all.) He looked to find Maggie sitting up, her hair messy and eyes tired. She looked over at him and smiled, marking the place in her book with an old ten dollar bill. Nick found it funny that most people, himself included, still picked up the stray money in the streets.

"Hey," Maggie said.

" _Morning,"_ Nick signed, leaning back against the mahogany headboard. The room was lit only by the glow of Maggie's bedside lamp, and the early gray light of morning. If Nick had been able to hear, he would have heard larks calling outside the window. " _You okay?"_

"Yeah, I'm fine. I had another dream. I mean, it wasn't scary like the others, but it was weird. It was like I was seeing out of someone else's eyes. I was in a casino, and there was a guy laying on one of the craps tables. He had burns all up one of his arms, and his clothes were sandy and faded. His skin was blistered everywhere from sunburn. It looked like he'd spent a hundred years in the desert," She cast a nervous glance at Nick, which he returned, but then continued.

"And there were other people around me, talking about how that guy with the burns was special, and how someone would have to 'tell the big man.' And then it was like I remembered something, or whoever I was seeing for did. It was jail cell, and there were little bones in the corner. But, in the cell next to me, through the bars, there was a body. There were bite marks on the leg, and in the dream I felt like I'd done it. I ate someone's leg.

"But, it wasn't that scary, because it felt fake. It felt like a movie. I woke up for a little while after that, and then I got back to sleep. Then, it was scary. It was Ralph's house I think, and I was seeing through someone else's eyes again. There was this closet, and I was rifling through it. I knew I had to get whatever it was out of the closet, because whatever was in the closet was very bad. I had to get to it fast, or it was going to kill me. And just as I was getting to a bottom of this box of scarves and ties or something, there was a big flash of light and I woke up for good. That was a couple hours ago."

Nick's eyes widened. " _Did you say closet?"_

. . .

Nick continued to think about that as he walked back towards the bedroom. What the hell did a closet have to do with _anything_? He shook his head and sighed; he was really tired of unanswered questions. He saw Maggie out of the corner of his eye, standing in front of the bathroom sink as she rinsed her mouth out with the new water from the faucet. It had taken a heck of a lot of people at the water plant, but they had done it, and the lights were soon to follow. Things were looking up, oh yes. She stood in one of the flannel shirts he always wore, she had taken to wearing them to bed since moving to the Free Zone. Her hair was up in a messy ponytail, (She had cut it since they'd been in Boulder, and it now only came to her shoulders. It was more ceremonious for her then she'd thought it would be, it was as though she were shedding all her goals from the old world. There were different things to focus on in the new world, and new people to be with.) and her long legs were bare. He grinned shyly when he saw her; she was just so pretty. He felt himself blushing. He just couldn't believe someone like her wanted to be with someone like him. He knocked on the door just after she spit out the water.

She looked over and smiled, but said nothing. He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, his head on top of hers because he was so much taller. She smirked, reaching her hand up and placing it on the back of his neck, she pulled his head down to meet her face and kissed him.

"I want to show you something," she said softly, but the smirk on her face was gone. Instead her eyes were shiny, and she looked slightly disconnected. Nick nodded.

She took his hand, and walked him into the bedroom. It was very cozy in there now. They had a big comforter on their bed, and pictures all over the wall behind the bed. There was a window on the far left wall where the sunlight peeked through the light gray curtains in the morning. It still looked small, but now it looked like theirs. He sat down on the bed, feeling a slight draft as he was only wearing some plaid pajama pants. Maggie stood on her tiptoes to reach the patchwork bag on the top shelf of the closet, it was hard for her to reach even despite her height. Nick knew that bag. She had told him a little about the abuse she'd experienced as a child, and that she'd had that bag the night she got the scar. She always waved her hand at it, making it seem like no big deal. And while this made Nick angry, he knew there was nothing he could do. It was the new world, and all that was left for him to do was listen.

Maggie brought the bag down and sat across from him on the bed, then spilled all the contents out on the patchwork quilt (another great find at Haverty's) beneath them. Nick raised his eyebrows. He didn't know what to do. It was almost like they were items in a museum, and the guards would be called on him if he touched anything.

Maggie smiled, remembering everyone. The sock, the ring, the boot lace, and the hair bow. It was peculiar to have all the memories laid out in front of her. _It's only been a month and a half_ , she thought in slight awe. She pushed back the items, getting to the real good stuff: the pictures.

"This was just- I wanted to show you them. I was wondering if I could put them up somewhere, y'know? Like, the top corner of this wall, or something. Just so they don't completely disappear," she said dryly.

To her surprise, she did not cry. Maybe she was finally starting to accept it, not just that they were gone, but everyone from the old world. The new dreams she'd been having, the ones in which she'd been seeing things through someone else's eyes, had sort of put things in perspective. That was the part of her life that felt unreal now, not the actual situation. And though she was starting to feel a little better, that came with the usual guilt. She didn't want to let them fade away, but then she thought about all the people who had. And she knew she would never forget them, so now she could hang them on the wall, and always have them in the back of her mind. It was like a little mental insurance policy. She looked up, Nick smiling a closed mouthed, apologetic smile at her. He put a hand on her knee, nodding slowly in a knowing manner.

"I'm okay now, I think," she said, maybe actually meaning it this time. "Are you?"

Nick's smile just widened, and made a circle with his thumb and forefinger: _A-okay._

For the next twenty minutes, Maggie showed Nick the people that were most important to her in the old life. She realized that she hadn't even looked at those pictures since stuffing them in her bag on the day she left Murphy, and she almost laughed at the idea. _Too much going on, I guess,_ she thought. The photos were an odd sort of medicine for both Maggie, as well as Nick. He was glad she was starting to accept things, and that made it easier for him to start putting his past behind him, too. He realized with some guilt how much harder it must have been for Maggie in those first couple weeks alone after the plague, and not just because some assholes had tried to kidnap her on _two_ occasions. Because, unlike Nick himself, she'd had a family. She'd had people she'd been bound to her whole life. She didn't just hop around from town to town like Nick had, running somewhere else after a few weeks.

( _Nick Andros runs.)_

 _(You'll get lost, and they'll leave you.)_

And she got through it somehow. Nick also felt different about the people around him. He hadn't had a family for a very long time, but now it was almost like he had one big one right there in Boulder. Him and all his friends. He smiled remembering those dreams, and the good feelings. The _warm_ feelings were now always present. And he didn't know if it was just becuase Mother Abagail was there, or because he was around such good people all the time. But what did it matter? He was happy, for the first time maybe in his entire life. He was just trying the enjoy the moment.

Maggie's heart ached with each time she looked at a photo, but it was sort of good. She still felt love for them, even after they were gone. And now she had so many other people to love around her. The pictures were all of the best times. There was Missy and Sean on their wedding day, looking into each other's eyes. They'd had a small, courthouse ceremony, but it was still very special. Maggie had always thought she'd have a small wedding like that, but she didn't really know if weddings even existed in this new world. The next was Missy again, nine months pregnant with Colleen, and then another of Missy with Colleen the day she was born.

( _With a maggot crawling out of her nose.)_

Sean and Missy lying together on that old couch next, Colleen asleep on Sean's chest. Then, a rare picture of Maggie, playing on the floor with a baby Colleen. She'd always been very good with children.

( _In the green gingham dress.)_

There was a picture of Missy and Maggie, doing the waltz together in the living room of the old apartment. Missy led even though Maggie was six inches taller. The last was of Sean, Missy, Colleen, and a tiny baby Finn. Maggie had taken that picture. It was Thanksgiving and it was their first picture of a new family of four. But it didn't last.

Maggie taped the pictures up to the wall, where she planned to keep them forever. After a nice evening together with Nick, Maggie laid in bed feeling better. She saw the faces of the best people from the old world, and the new world alike. She was glad to know there were good people in both places. That night, she dreamed once again of the something in the closet.

 **Author's Note:** There it is! We've finally begun Part Three! And things are getting serious. I hope you're feeling the suspense. Also, that's two chapters in two days! I'm glad to get my groove back, I hope you're glad too!

Quick thing; I've noticed that it says the last time I updated was March 12? Which is not true because I updated today. Weird, right? I just thought I'd address that. I don't know. Maybe I'm losing my concept of time.

PLEASE review to let me know what you thought!

Thank you so much for reading! Have a great day!

Peace and love.


	16. Chapter Eleven: Part One

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Three:** _August 1990_

 **Chapter Eleven:** Part One

Soft murmurs filled the Canyon Boulevard Park band shells, all adding together to create a general nervous buzz. Maggie's hands were shaking. It wasn't that she was scared, per say, she was just anxious. They had to stand up in front of everyone, and everyone was a lot. By August 8, the number of citizens in the Boulder Free Zone had risen to almost two thousand. And while they weren't all present at the meeting, a hell of a lot of them were. She sat on one of the levels of the concrete amphitheater, Nick on her right holding her hand, and Frannie on her left. Maggie and Frannie had become good friends since meeting that day on Mother Abagail's porch. There was something about Maggie that drew Frannie to her, it was almost like she was a younger version of Mother Abagail without all the God talk.

Maggie also felt happy to have Frannie as a friend. She liked the way Frannie was always giggling, but it seemed like Frannie had a hidden strength within her. And Maggie wasn't sure if it was the maternal instinct or if it had been there before the plague. Maggie sometimes thought back to herself before the plague, and felt like she had been so young and silly. But, maybe people always look back at themselves that way after they become a grownup, no matter how quickly the transformation has to happen.

Stu stepped up to the podium that had been placed in the bandstand. He tried to start speaking in the microphone, but was met with tremendous feedback. The microphone whined highly, and everyone in the audience (except Nick) cringed at the noise, some covering their ears. That sound made Maggie's teeth hurt. After the incident with the microphone, however, Stu turned out to be a great orator. The meeting began with a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, and after several other items were quickly covered, Stu read the names of the candidates for the Ad Hoc Committee. Each member stood up as their name was called, which ultimately turned out fine for Maggie, and she felt stupid for having been nervous about it. She had always gotten terrible stage fright. Every presentation for school had been a major struggle. They were going to read each name again and the people would vote for a single member individually. But, just as Stu was about to announce himself as the first candidate, Harold Lauder's now thin arm rose. There were a few hushed whispers, but Stu called on him anyway.

Harold Lauder was much different than he had been before the superflu hit. Well, everyone was different, but the difference was both physical and emotional, and was easier to detect than the change in others. He had stopped eating so many chocolate PayDays, and his skin had cleared up considerably. As a boy of almost seventeen, Harold was pretty tall, and now his weight matched his height. He still wore his brow-line glasses, and he now longer used so much gel in his light brown hair. He had a job on the body-dumping crew, getting all the corpses out of Boulder and disposing of them before the snow hit, everyone wanting to avoid the possible disease which could arise from all those bodies. The people on that crew had taken to calling him 'Hawk,' a nickname which had spread to most everyone else in Boulder. Harold may have been a quite eligible bachelor in the Free Zone, had it not been for Nadine. They were not exactly a couple, but there was something there. When Harold caught Nadine looking at him, or vice versa, there was almost an electricity between them. Something that was drawing them nearer to one another.

"Yes Harold?" Stu said from his place on the podium, eyebrows raised.

"I move that the list of prospective candidates be accepted in it's entirety," Harold said smugly.

The motion passed with flying colors. Frannie glanced at Maggie nervously, and Nick squeezed her hand, but no one else seemed to have any qualms about accepting Harold's sudden interjection. The meeting lasted around another hour, including a speech by Brad Kitchener about how the lights would be back on any day now. Then, there was a question and answer portion. It was nearly eleven by the time people started leaving the bandshell, and the sky was starry. There was, however, a chill in the air. The nights in Boulder now got down to about forty degrees, and everyone knew there was not much summer left for them.

Frannie and Stu walked back with Nick and Maggie. They lived in an apartment near main street, but the walk there from the park was also in the general direction of Baseline Drive. The cicadas were buzzing, and a comfortable silence fell between the four of them. Maggie looked up toward the half moon, thinking of how much colder it was in Boulder. As a southerner, Maggie was very nervous for the winter. She imagined avalanches and snow plows looking for bodies. It occurred to her that even if some disaster did happen, there would be no one to find the bodies. They would be eaten partially be the animals, and then decompose like the rest of them. And _that_ would be the true end of the human race; once and for all. Their bodies would be nothing different from the rest except for a few months fresher. Maggie shivered not entirely because of the temperature, and Nick's hand tightened around hers. She rested her head against the side of his shoulder and yawned. Even though they had stopped traveling, life was arguably more exhausting to live in the Free Zone. They had to deal with things there.

Stu cleared his throat and scratched at his red brown beard with his free hand, the other snaked around Frannie's waist.

"This whole committee thing sure was a good idea, Nicky." Nick caught only half of this, but understood. He tapped his head gravely, then smiled.

"What do you two think of Harold Lauder?" Frannie asked quietly. She and Stu already had a bad history with Harold, and she figured that was why he continued to rub her the wrong way. He was different from when she'd first met him. He smiled a lot more now. But to Frannie, it seemed there was something vacant and hollow about that smile. An insincere smile. It reminded Frannie of howling wind.

Maggie cleared her throat a little awkwardly, taking her head off of Nick's shoulder to face Frannie. She and Nick had talked about Harold before, and he gave both of them a bad feeling. To Maggie, he almost made her feel the way she did in her dreams. The one where she ( _Who really?_ ) was searching through the closet. He gave her the same sense of dreadful urgency. There was something so disingenuous about him, and when she'd told Nick how she felt, he vehemently agreed with her. He didn't like the Lauder fellow at all.

"Uh, we…" Maggie began, stuttering. She eventually got her footing. "I think he wanted to be on the committee, and he was angry we didn't invite him. That's why he did that tonight, he wants to make himself look good."

Nick started writing on his notepad as Stu agreed. "The folks 'round here seem to have really taken a liking to him, and he's changed a lot since we first met. But, I don't know… it's something about how fast he was okay when Frannie and me told him we were together."

 _They do like him, yes. Call him Hawk now. But I don't know if he really likes anyone here, it always seems like he's wearing a mask or something. And, have you noticed he keeps his doors locked?_ Nick wrote, Maggie reading it aloud. They were almost to the apartment, speaking quietly so the few folks milling about wouldn't hear them talking about their beloved 'Hawk'.

Frannie sighed. "I think he might just still be getting over this. I mean, he's just a kid still, really. He might not be such a bad guy, but he just doesn't feel right to me. I don't know…" She trailed off as they reached the apartment, where they said their goodbyes and went their separate ways.

. . .

That night, Nadine Cross walked sneakily up the walk of Harold Lauder's house, near the edge of town. It was time for her to fulfill her orders. She could not deny it anymore. She was _damned_.

. . .

Ten days passed, as the people of the Free Zone continued trying to get their grips on real life again. Or, as close to the real, old life as they could get. On the 13 of August, the lights came back on. There was a general feeling of relief in Boulder that day, and a turning off committee was also established. The few houses that _were_ full of dead bodies were also filled with switches flicked 'On'. Maggie's garden had grown considerably, now full of daisies and scarlet ( _bloody?_ ) begonias, and Frannie often came over for lunch to marvel at the flowers and drink lemonade. (Tom Cullen and Stu Redman were often also present at these lunches.) She was feeling increasingly exhausted as the baby continued to grow, but the morning sickness seemed to be completely gone. Frannie was really starting to believe that they were actually going to be a little family: her, the baby, and Stu.

Frannie was happy as she walked to Ralph Brentner's house, with Stu's arm wrapped around her waist as it almost always was these days. It was around seven o'clock on the evening of August 18, and the sky was painted with streaks of pink and orange. The clouds minimal as the sun set. It was the third official meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee, and when she and Stu walked in the front door of the modest two-story, she saw that all the other members were already present in the living room. Four card tables had been set up in the middle, creating a long table around which they could all deliberate. The topic of tonight's meeting was the spies. At the previous meeting two nights ago, it was suggested by someone (Frannie couldn't recall who. Pregnancy brain, anyone?) that they send spies out to Las Vegas to see what the dark man may be planning. Everyone agreed, some very apprehensive, but, agreeing nonetheless.

The first half hour of the meeting was fine. Larry nominated the Judge to be a spy, and the motion passed. Judge (well, former judge) Franklin Farris was a tall, black man of about seventy. He was wise and capable, and one of Larry's arguments was that no one would expect them to send someone older than forty. Next nominated was Dayna Jurgens. She was suggested by Susan Stern, who was traveling with Dayna before anyone else. Dayna was a short woman with honey blond hair and giant brown eyes. She had helped Susan fend off a group of males wanting to rape them, similar to the experiences Maggie had before meeting Tom and Nick. Dayna was strong, and would be good at keeping the secret, so she too was voted a spy. A contemplative silence fell over the room when it was time for a third spy to be nominated, and then Nick started to scratch his pen across his pad. He sat with Maggie on his left, and Ralph on his other side. This time, he handed the note to Ralph. He sat back with his arms crossed and face serene, ready for the reaction.

Ralph skimmed the note them looked up with brows furrowed, lines of worry were now permanently etched into his sunburned face. "Nick, you can't be serious!"

Nick only nodded, his dark eyes fixed on the note in Ralph's hand. Maggie cast him an uneasy glance, but Nick purposefully averted his eyes. He was going to catch hell for this one.

"What's it say, Ralph?" Susan asked impatiently

Ralph sighed, then ran a hand over his lips. "Well, it says...Nick nominates Tom Cullen."

The room erupted, yells practically bounced off the tan walls of the living room, empty save for the card tables and a few kitchen chairs. Acoustics in there were great. Frannie seemed to be the most upset, almost screaming about how Nick was crazy and how it wasn't a funny joke. While Frannie was exasperated, Larry just seemed angry. He muttered under his breath. The other members of the committee also participated in similar outbursts. Maggie, however, was silent. She only put a hand over her mouth, that familiar gesture, and leaned forward with her elbows on the table. Her eyes were glassy, but no tears fell. Nick wrote like a fiend, again handing the note to Ralph. Maggie now understood why she wasn't the one he'd handed the note to.

"Alright, alright!" Stu exclaimed, and the room finally quieted. "Nick's been writin' like a bastard, and he's finally got the floor, so let's just listen."

Everyone silently agreed, glancing to Nick and then back at Ralph. Maggie stared down at the table. Nick put a cautious hand on her thigh, but she did not look at him.

 _First of all,_ Ralph began reading the note, _I know Tom just as well as Larry knows the Judge, and maybe even better. He loves Mother Abagail. He'd do anything for her, even roasting over a slow fire. And I mean it-no hype. He'd set himself on fire, if she asked him to._

Maggie's heart sank and she felt a little sick.

"Oh, Nick, nobody's arguing that, but Tom's-," Fran began, but Stu interrupted.

"Fran, let it go. Nick's got the floor."

 _My second point is similar to the one Larry made about the Judge. The dark man will not expect us to send Tom, and your reactions to this nomination are in favor of that argument._

 _My third-and last-point is that Tom is not a half-wit. He saved my life once during a tornado, he reacted much faster than anyone else I know would have. Tom may be child-like sometimes, but a child can still learn to do certain things if they are drilled and taught and then drilled some more. I see no problem in giving Tom a simple story to memorize. We can give him some reason why we might have sent him away_.

"Like we didn't want him polluting our gene pool?" Stu interjected. Nick shrugged, wincing. It was hard for him to do something like that to Tom, to be talking about him like this made Nick ache. But it was his best plan. The dark man could potentially kill all of them if he wasn't stopped. Everyone in the Free Zone just gone.

Maggie stood up abruptly. "'Scuse me," she said and then left the living room, walking down the hall towards the bathroom. The use of the word drilled had been enough to make her furious, but the idea of Tom _actually going to Vegas?_ And the story they were making up? It was all disgusting.

( _I'll see you in the desert._ )

She barely made it to the toilet before throwing up. She clamped her hands on the sides of the sink and breathed heavily, looking at herself in the mirror. Her hair was down and wavy, the sleeves of her navy blue henley rolled to the elbows. Maggie wondered how she could look so similar and feel so different to the way she had before the superflu. _What the hell are we doing?_ she thought hopelessly, _What am_ I _doing?_ Her mind wandered to the dodgy few hours after Sean's death, and she glanced wearily at the razor in a soap dish by the sink. She knew she'd never do it, but it made her feel better to have options. _Like life insurance_ , she thought viciously and almost laughed. For a minute, she almost regretted not killing herself when she had the chance. But then she remembered why. Mother Abagail, Nick, Tom, Frannie, Stu, Larry, all of them. The love that everyone felt for each other in Boulder, the kindness and the goodness. She knew that was why. But still, sometimes she felt like she didn't belong. Like this was too big for her, and Mother Abagail had chosen wrong. She was tired, she wanted to be done. She didn't want to deal with the dark man, and she didn't want to send Tom to deal with him on their behalf because they were too motherfucking scared to face him.

 _How dare he?_ she thought angrily, both of the dark man and slightly of Nick. She sighed, leaning against the wall. Her head was pounding and she still felt sick, almost as though she was having the dream with the red eye. She just wanted to see Sean, and Finn, and Colleen, and Missy. She wished the plague had taken her too. _I've never been 'special' before,_ she thought, still fuming, _Why did I have to be 'special' now_?

The meeting continued without Maggie. They had stopped for a moment after she left, Ralph pausing in the middle of the note and looking to Nick. Nick was looking off worriedly at the the entrance to the hall, his dark eyes swimming with mix of guilt and hurt. Ralph tapped him on the shoulder and he looked back to the group.

"Is she alright?" Ralph asked, "Should I keep going?"

Nick nodded, still looking towards the hall. Ralph sighed doubtfully, but continued with the note anyway.

"He can even say he's mad at the people here, and wants to get them back at them for sending him away. The one imperative which would have to be drilled into him would be that he can never change his story, no matter what."

Frannie tried to interject again, but Stu reminded her to keep it orderly and she apologized.

"If he goes over his story enough times, I think he would be able to withstand anything the dark man has in store for him."

The note went on to explain that Nick had already enlisted the help of Stan Novotny, a therapist in the old world, to hypnotize Tom. And that was how they would convince Tom of his story. Nick had met previously with this therapist/hypnotist, and had gone under himself. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to because he wouldn't be able to hear the triggers, but reading lips was enough. After that, he'd tried Tom and it went off without a hitch. Tom would only be out there for a couple of weeks if they sent him soon, looking at the airfields and listening to the conversations of the people out in Vegas. Then they would know if they should be preparing for disease warfare, something eerily familiar to all of them now, or something like missiles. None of them knew which option would be worse. They would tell Tom to come back when the moon was full, if he could come back at all. It took around a half hour more of arguing from the committee, but eventually, Nick had convinced them all. Except one. Maggie had not returned to the meeting since abruptly vacating her seat.


	17. Chapter Eleven: Part Two

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Three:** _August 1990_

 **Chapter** **Eleven:** Part Two

The committee ultimately voted without Maggie present, agreeing that Nick could talk to her about it when they got home. If she ever came out of the bathroom. She had just been sitting in there against the wall to the left of the sink, thinking. She replayed the events of the past two months meticulously, and she wondered where she had gone wrong. How had she gotten to this point? She didn't know. It was what Missy would have called a perfect storm, had she been alive to call the situation anything. She looked back again at the razor, and a soft knock came on the door. When there was no voice calling her name, she assumed it was Nick. She unlocked it gingerly, and said nothing when she opened the door.

When she saw Nick, it became apparent to her how tired he looked. There were few lines on his face, but there were dark circles under his eyes, now both unpatched at all times. The scar on his leg from where he'd shot himself was just beginning to heal completely, and there were still scars from Ray Booth's ring peppering his chest. She knew he didn't want to nominate Tom Cullen. She knew who much Nick loved him. And she also knew that his plan might actually work. _Might._ What a nasty word. She was still angry, though, despite her best efforts. And there was another feeling which was arguably much worse; guilt. She had done it. She had gotten her hopes up about Boulder, she thought maybe when they got there, the dark man might just leave them alone to their business. Or maybe even disappear completely. But it just wasn't in the stars for them.

She looked up at Nick wearily, leaning on the door frame. "Home?" she asked, and was surprised by how old and croaky her voice sounded.

Nick nodded, and they started out of the house. They nodded a quick goodbye to Ralph and Olivia, then began a short walk home. They didn't speak, and they didn't hold hands. They both walked with their fists in their pockets. There was a definite nip in the air now, and Maggie tried to hide her shivering. She wished she could stand right next to Nick, her head on his shoulder and his arm around her waist. But, he seemed like almost a completely different person to her now. She felt betrayed. For herself or Tom she didn't know. They had talked a couple times about who they were thinking of nominating for the three spy positions, and not once had Nick mentioned Tom. He probably didn't want to upset her, but that offended her more. He didn't need to walk on eggshells around her, and he could say things even if they would hurt her. She thought he'd known that before.

Nick closed the door slowly when they got back to the house, and when he turned around, he saw Maggie standing in the living room. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and he could see the slight furrow of her brows. They had never had a real fight before, and he didn't know if he was prepared for her wrath quite yet. He supposed he should have known when he'd decided to nominate Tom Cullen. Maggie loved him almost like a brother or a nephew. Nick felt guiltier. She had already lost one nephew and then some, and now she might lose another. But he also felt a little angry, not really at her, but that's where he was choosing to project the feeling. It wasn't all about how she felt, this was something bigger.

"Tom Cullen?" Maggie asked with her eyebrows raised. If Nick could have heard her, he would have noticed the lack of edge to her voice. She only sounded exhausted.

Nick nodded, no longer feeling as guilty. He sighed in frustration and then shrugged. He started to write, his hand shaking as he did so. It occurred to him that he felt like crying, but he didn't know if it was out of anger, sadness, or fear. Maybe it was all three. He handed her the note with a violent rip off his pad.

 _What else was I supposed to do, Maggie? It was the best option. This is not just about our feelings, or your feelings. It's about everyone in Boulder. I thought you would understand why I made the decision!_ the note read.

"Nick, for the love of all that is holy! I fucking understand!" she shot back, yelling. She realized how long it had been since she had yelled like this, and it sort of felt good. "I'm not stupid! You're not the only one around here who has the ideas, okay? I just thought you would have told me before you sprung that on everyone at the meeting! Out of nowhere!"

He followed her lips closely, and her face grew redder as she continued to yell. Nick wrote her another note, he could almost feel his body temperature rising with his anger, and he realized his face must be just as red as Maggie's by now.

He held the note out to Maggie and she snatched it. _Again, it's not all about you! I didn't think you needed to know every single one of my thoughts! Do I need to tell you every little thing I do now?_

"No! But you know this isn't a little thing! You think that just because you have an idea like that you can hide it from everyone! You think it's gonna be just like sending Tom on a mission, you pretentious asshole! But instead of coming home, he'll get waterboarded, or splinters stuck under his fingernails. And eventually Randall fucking Flagg will just kill him anyway!"

She was really screaming now, she realized dimly that she could have been whispering and it would still be a fight. Nick wouldn't hear it anyway. But it felt good to scream, after all that had happened, she felt like she deserved to scream.

Nick's eyes filled with tears of shame at the mention of Tom being tortured, and he was finding it hard to have to keep looking at Maggie just to hear her.

 _Don't fucking tell me what I think! Apparently, you have no idea what I think, because you think I wanted to send Tom Cullen to the desert! YOU REALLY THINK THIS IS WHAT I WANT?_ his next note read. He was trying very hard not to let his tears spill over onto his brightly flushed cheeks.

"Nick. I know this is not what you want! This is not what any of us wants! You just want to go back to being a drifter! Hitch hiking with strangers every week so that you won't have to be with anyone! You can just be off in your own little Nick Andros world! But guess what! You're not alone anymore, and you'll have to just fucking deal with that! Maybe you haven't thought about the fact that no one wants to be here! Everyone lost someone, okay? You are not the only one this is hard on! And this time, you have no choice, you can't run away!" Maggie retorted, her throat starting to feel scratchy and raw from all the yelling.

Nick's breath was coming in short, heavy gasps. It was almost a crude imitation of someone in the last stages of the superflu. A few tears managed to snake down his cheeks, dripping off of his chin, and it was taking everything in him not to sob.

( _Nick Andros runs.)_

( _THEY'LL LEAVE YOU! THEY'LL LEAVE YOU! YOU'RE LOST NICK! SHE'LL LEAVE YOU AND THEN EVERYONE ELSE WILL CATCH ON!)_

That's when Nick Andros lost it. His buried his head in his hands, silently starting to weep. His chest heaved, and it looked to Maggie like he was almost wilting. He started to sway on his feet with the force of his cries, and he began to feel light-headed.

( _He runs he runs he runs. Nick Andros runs.)_

Maggie's eyes softened, and the lines of anger on her face quickly turned to guilt and concern. She saw him rocking as he wept, and she was almost afraid he would fall over. It was as though he were a leaf in a strong autumn wind. He couldn't decide whether or not he wanted to be blown off the tree. He looked so _fragile_ and _broken_. It made her insides twist to see him like that. She sighed in guilt, then approached him.

Nick flinched when she first touched him, still wobbly on his own feet, but then quickly submitted and almost melted onto her. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling his head to her shoulder where he continued to cry. She stood on her tiptoes, and he leaned down to wrap his arms tightly around her waist. He was trying to get his breathing under control, but the tears still streamed down his face and onto Maggie's shoulder. He was beyond ashamed, nearing the territory of mortified, but he was also beyond the point of caring.

"It's okay, Nick. I'm sorry. It's okay, everything is fine," Maggie soothed. She knew he couldn't hear her, but it felt appropriate for the moment anyway. It did some good anyway though, just to feel her voice vibrating against him comforted Nick in a way he didn't expect. He again felt the aura of warmness she exuded wash over him, and his breathing started to calm.

After a couple minutes, both standing there holding each other, Nick had stopped crying. Maggie pulled back and looked at him, her hands still on the back of his neck. She took her thumbs and wiped most of the tears from his reddened cheeks. He looked down in shame, adding to his flush. She brushed the hair away from his eyes, then giggled.

"Nicholas Andros, we have got to cut this hair," she said with a small smile. She loved calling him Nicholas, it felt more personal somehow. More intimate. Nick returned the smile and sniffed.

"Better?" Maggie asked. Nick made the _a-okay_ sign with his right hand, then kissed her forehead quickly.

"I'm sorry, Nick. I shouldn't have said those things. I know you didn't mean it in a bad way, I know it's the best option we have. It's just hard sometimes. Things are so different now," she said. Nick nodded, then pulled away to get out his pad.

 _I'm sorry too. I didn't mean to get angry, just like you said, it's hard sometimes with everything that happened. But, I love you._ the note read. Maggie smirked.

"I love you too," she returned. He put his hands back around her waist, and she had hers back on his neck. He kissed her tenderly, but Maggie could feel the hunger and longing behind it. Things escalated quickly, Maggie wrapped her legs around Nick's waist. They continued kissing as he carried her back into the bedroom, all previous anger forgotten on both parts. They made love in the twilight, and it was almost ten by the time they were finished. At least, according to the watch that Maggie hadn't bothered to take off before sex. She slept with it still on her wrist that night, reminiscent of the way she'd slept with it on when they'd still been traveling to Boulder.

Amazingly, that too now seemed like years ago. They both drifted off quickly, naked under white cotton sheets. Maggie fell asleep that night just as she did most: Nick's left arm wrapped around her and her head on his chest. An owl hooted loudly near the window, and the crickets chirped, but there was a bite developing in the air nonetheless. Summer waned along with the moon. Elsewhere in town, Mother Abagail wrote the note explaining her departure from the Free Zone, and out into the woods of the great North West.

 **Author's Note:** There you have it! And guess what, the next chapter will be the end of part three! Part four is the last one, and let me tell you, it gets crazy. Get excited! I can't believe we're almost to the end! (Side note: I'm only posting the chapters in multiple parts because they won't upload if they're too long. Just if you were curious.)

I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter! PLEASE review to let me know what you thought.

Have a great day!

Peace and love.


	18. Chapter Twelve: Part One

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Three:** _August 1990_

 **Extra Disclaimer** : Large portions of dialogue from Tom's hypnosis are taken directly from the book. That was one of my favorite scenes, and I felt it was just too perfect to have any other way.

 **Chapter Twelve:** Part One

The wind was warm there, it flowed pleasantly through an open window, wherever it was. But Maggie had the sneaking suspicion it was Vegas. The lights were low, and there was distinct smarminess to the decor. The sheets were black silk, the headrest adorned with intricate designs in fake gold. There was a half-naked girl lying on the bed, her breasts were exposed and she wore nothing but a black pair of panties. She had on tons of makeup. Her eyeshadow was a bright green, her lips crimson, and the blush on her cheeks a harsh orange. Her dyed black hair was still half-up in a disheveled beehive. One of her red nails had broken off, lying near her on the crumpled sheets. For a minute, through whoever's eyes, Maggie couldn't tell if the woman was dead or alive. But, she ( _who?_ ) looked closer, and saw the gentle movements of her chest. She was only further convinced of the figure's liveness when it rolled over. The woman's face was half smashed into one of the pillows, and on her back was a large tattoo of a cobra.

Whoever Maggie was in this dream went over to the telephone, plugging in a number that Maggie didn't recognize. Then, a deep, male voice rolled out of her. It was an utterly strange feeling to say the least.

"RF?" the voice spoke. Maggie couldn't hear what was being said on the other line. "Yeah, I got her. Snorted cocaine twice since I've been with her. I think the bitch was a hooker before, I don't know...Yeah, no problem. She might be ODin' on me anyway."

Maggie was no longer in the bizarre room, but out on a highway. She saw the woman from before, now wearing nothing at all, strung up on a cross crafted from telephone poles. Birds had already pecked away her eyes, and there were only bloody caves in their place. Around her neck, a crudely made sign read: DRUG ADDICT. The nails used to hammer her into the crucifix were bent and rusty, and had she still been alive she would have been out of luck anyway. There were not many tetanus shots left anymore. Her mouth had been ripped at either side, forming a gruesome joker-esque smile; a smile the woman would wear forever. But, Maggie didn't stay long.

Again, she was struck with the dream of the bad something in the closet. But, she almost expected it. It had come to her almost every night since arriving in Boulder.

Lastly, in the odd film-strip of horrors, she saw Colleen in the green dress. Only now, it wasn't on the road in Murphy, and Missy wasn't there. It was in a strange, void-like window. Nothing around but blackness. The maggot still crawled from the small girl's nose, but this time she opened her mouth to speak and a whole village of maggots were camped inside. Maggie vaguely remembered the burning Sean on the pier.

"HE WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD HE WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD!" Colleen screamed, the words running in a long string. But, it was not the voice of a little girl. It was the deep, gurgling roar that Maggie now recognized immediately as the dark man.

. . .

Maggie awoke with a start, and sharp gasp escaping her. She instinctively pulled the sheet over her naked torso. Nick had rolled away and now had his back to her. She tried to catch her breath, her heart beating like the wings of a humming bird. Wildly, a thought popped into her head: _Mother Abagail's gone._

. . .

Maggie had ultimately decided not to wake Nick, and did her best to fall back to sleep as the night of August 18 bloomed into the morning of the 19. But, her efforts proved fruitless. It was hours of tossing and turning, listening as the crickets and cicadas stopped and the birds began. She didn't know how she knew, but Mother Abagail was gone. She could feel a space where Mother Abagail used to be; the part of her that now felt hollow. Nick woke up around seven in the morning. Maggie immediately told him about Mother Abagail, and it would be an understatement to say he freaked out. They dressed quickly, Maggie in a white v-neck and jeans, along with the same boots she'd used when traveling. Nick put on a red, plaid flannel, along with _his_ jeans and boots. He was so jittery, he almost fell while buttoning his jeans. He was still buckling his belt when he and Maggie ran out of the house, racing to their bikes. Mother Abagail lived on the other side of town.

Sure enough, Mother Abagail was nowhere to be found in her house on Drew Lane. All there was left of her was a quickly written note, resting underneath a Bible on the small kitchen table. Maggie read the large and trembling strokes out loud, Nick following the movement of her lips.

 _I must be gone a bit now. I've sinned and presumed to know the Mind of God._ _My sin had been PRIDE, and He wants me to find my place in His work again._

 _I will be with you again soon if it is God's will._

 _-Abby Freemantle_

Everyone on the committee was immediately alerted, and an emergency meeting was called. After about a half hour of pure hysteria, it was decided to continue as usual. It was ultimately Mother Abagail's choice to go, and she had said she would be back if it was God's will. And what were they going to do? Drag her back to the Free Zone kicking and screaming? There was nothing they could do. And after all, hadn't it been their trust in Mother Abagail's word that had brought them to the safe cocoon of Boulder in the first place? They had to keep their faith in her now.

Though the news of Mother Abagail's disappearance had swept completely through the Free Zone by noontime, the reaction was not as explosive as one may have expected. There was of course a gigantic sense of disappointment, but the citizens also knew that there was nothing to be done. Most of them had gotten pretty good at accepting the worst by now. Neither Maggie nor Nick really understood why she had left, but Maggie thought she could grasp it a little bit. Mother Abagail had let the masses flock to her, sitting back to create a committee, rebuild society. While it was sort of being dealt with, they were still avoiding the big issue. The dark man was out there, and they still hadn't made a big enough effort to stop him, and Mother Abagail's God was not pleased. Or, at least, that's what Maggie guessed. Maybe she just wanted a reason more than she wanted to stand by logic.

So, everyone continued with their day, a slight sense of unease present but buried. And, the first order of business for Stu, Larry, Nick, and Maggie? Hypnotize Tom Cullen.

. . .

Larry was set to speak to the Judge that evening, and Susan Stern went to propose the spy idea to Dayna as the four made their way to Tom's house. They only hoped everything would work out. Though they were all trying to hide it, Mother Abagail's departure had rocked all of their belief in the strength of the current plan. They biked to Tom Cullen's small stucco house in the early afternoon, stopping to admire the front lawn once again, as they always did when visiting Tom. There were a couple dozen sculptures assembled around the front of Tom's house, the majority of which being large plastic flamingos. Those were Maggie's favorite. There was also a large wishing well, with a plastic Jesus, hands outstretched, sitting in the bucket. There were five Virgin Marys also scattered around, along with one plastic cow.

Tom stepped out of his house with a slam of the front screen door, seeing the group before they had even finished parking their bikes. His bright blue eyes were dancing as always, and his reddish gold beard had grown even bushier since coming to the Free Zone.

"Nicky!" Tom yelled. "And Maggie too! Am I glad to see you! Laws yes!" He threw his arms around Nick's neck, giving him a hug. He did the same with Maggie. Nick felt his eyes start to sting with tears as he watched Tom hug her, but he quickly wiped them away.

"And Larry! And Stu!" Tom exclaimed, beaming. Nick pointed to the door.

"You want to come in? You can all come in, laws yes! I've just been decorating my house."

Tom always said decorating, because the house had been furnished when he moved in. There were a lot of decorative bird cages, gilded eggs, and signs for old cigarettes. They were just things that Tom had collected from the various antique stores in Boulder. Maggie smiled widely as she looked around, thinking back to Tom on the first day she'd met him. Still the same old Tom. Maybe sometimes staying the same was good. They sat in the living room, golden light peeking in through all the open windows. It was a bright, warm day, but there was not a bird chirping. Maggie noticed this with sudden clarity, the hair standing up on the back of her neck. She grabbed Nick's hand with urgency, but didn't explain. He looked over at her, and likewise didn't respond.

"You like Tom's decorations?" Tom asked excitedly. "What do you think? Nice?"

"Very nice, Tom. I think that new flamingo is the best yet. It's so tall!" Maggie said, referring to the recently collected flamingo Tom had placed near the wishing well. It was taller than Tom himself, stuck into the ground with a large stake.

"Oh, laws yes, it's tall. It took a long time for Tom Cullen to put it in the ground," Tom said.

Nick handed a note to Maggie. She looked at him doubtfully, but read it anyway. She regretted coming, but knew she had to be there. "Tom, Nick wants to know if you'd mind being hypnotized again. Like when Stan did. But this time, it's very serious. Not a game like last time. Nick says he'll explain why it's so important afterwards."

"Go ahead," Tom agreed. "You are getting _veeeerrry sleeepy_ , right?"

"Yes, Tom. That's right," Maggie said softly with a small, half-hearted smile.

"Tom Cullen went to bed early last night, so he's not very tired. But, you can try if you want to," Tom said, his grin never faltering.

"Tom?" Stu said quietly from his spot in the armchair across from Tom. "Would you like to see an elephant?"

Tom eyes closed immediately, and his head dropped slightly forward. His breath slowed to long, calm strokes. Maggie scoffed a little in surprise. She never thought this would work, hypnosis just seemed far too trippy for her. But, when it worked, she didn't know why she should have been surprised. A lot of stranger things had happened since the morning of June 20. Nick handed Stu the prepared 'lines' for the hypnosis, written by Nick during the hours between the committee meeting and going to see Tom, and Stu took them gingerly.

"Tom, can you hear me?" Stu asked.

"Yes, I can hear you," Tom replied. The quality of Tom's voice made Larry look up sharply. It no longer sounded like Tom. Not exactly. It sounded deeper, more refined. The voice of the shadowland in Tom Cullen's subconscious that had been somehow been reached by the trigger question. Maggie saw Larry look up, his jaw tensing, but said nothing.

"I'm Stu Redman, Tom," Stu continued after a moment's pause. He too had been taken aback by the voice Tom was now speaking in.

"Yes. Stu Redman."

"Nick is here. And Maggie too."

"Yes. Maggie and Nick are here."

"Larry Underwood is here, too."

"Yes, Larry is here, too."

"We're your friends."

"I know."

"We'd like you to do something, Tom. For the Zone. It's dangerous."

"Dangerous…" Tom said. "Will I have to be afraid? Will I have to…"

Stu looked nervously at Nick, who only nodded in response. Maggie once again felt a little sick, running a hand anxiously through her now shorter hair.

"It's _him,_ " Tom said suddenly. Maggie's grip on Nick's hands immediately tightened as she felt a shudder wrack her body. Larry clasped his hands together, almost in prayer, and dug his elbows into his knees. He rested his chin on his hands, held on the edge of his seat. Stu had gone pale.

"Who, Tom?" Stu asked, his voice now shaking slightly.

"Flagg. His name is Randall Flagg. You want me to…" Tom took a sharp intake of breath through his front teeth. It was a desperate, bitter sound that made Maggie cringe.

"How do you know him, Tom?" Stu asked, going against the script for a moment.

"Dreams… I see his face in my dreams."

A chill went down Maggie's spine, thinking back to the shadowy mass on the Jolly Roger Pier. But she knew that wasn't his real face. It was a mask. She had never seen his real face, and wondered if anyone besides Tom ever had.

"You see him?"

"Yes…"

"What does he look like, Tom?"

Tom fell silent for a moment, his muscles tensed and relaxed seemingly at the same time. Maggie felt like they had let a dark presence into this bright, happy house, and an immense sense of guilt settled inside her. This wasn't right. None of it was.

"He looks like anybody you see on the street. But, when he grins, birds fall dead off of telephone lines. He looks at you a certain way, and a couple hours later you'll get hit by a car. He's everywhere, in the snakes, and the weasels. And the _rats,_ " Tom said bitterly, then went back to his calm, deep voice. "The grass yellows up and dies wherever he spits. He's always outside. He came from time. He doesn't know himself. Jesus knocked him into a herd of pigs once. His name is Legion. He's afraid of us. We're inside. He can call the wolves and live in the crows. His name is Legion and he is the king of nowhere. But he's afraid of us…. He's afraid..."

They all sat in stunned silence for a moment. Maggie's face had the paleness of a gravestone, and she was holding onto Nick so tight her knuckles were standing out, white as snow. Nick held a hand over his eyes, gripping Maggie with his other. Larry's forehead was now resting on his clasped hand, and he was breathing deeply. It was taking everything in him not to be sick. Stu sat with his mouth slightly agape, his hands quivering.

"Tom?" Larry said suddenly, not looking up. "Do you know if Mother Abagail...if she's still alive?"

"She's alive," Tom said. Larry breathed out a big gust of air, but did not raise his head. "But she is not yet right with God."

"Not right with God? What do you mean, Tommy?" Stu piped in.

"She's in the wilderness, God has lifted her up in the wilderness, she does not fear the terror that flies at noon or creeps at midnight. But she is not yet right with God. It was not the hand of Moses that brought water from the rock. It was not the hand of Abagail that turned the weasels back with their bellies empty. She's to be pitied. She will see, but she will see to late. There will be death. _His_ death. She will die on the wrong side of the river. She-"

"Stop him," Larry moaned, on the verge of tears. "Can you please stop him, please?"

"Tom," Stu said.

"Yes?"

"Are you the same Tom that Nick met in Oklahoma? The same Tom that we know when you're awake?"

"Yes. I am Tom. Both the outside and the inside."

Stu raised an eyebrow, not really understanding, but continued anyway. "You say you'll do what we ask?"

"Yes."

"Do you see… do you think you'll come back?"

"That's not for me to see or say. Where shall I go?"

"West, Tom."

Tom groaned a little, but almost without emotion in this hypnotized state. He spoke again in his now accentless voice. "West. Yes. West."

Stu went on telling Tom the plan, to always go West. To travel at night and sleep in the day. If you see a group of people, run. One person: kill them. Tom shuddered at this and didn't really agree. Nick figured you couldn't really change anyone, they had to choose to change. And on this matter, Tom would not. To tell the people in Vegas that the Boulder people drove him out. To get a job and act like he belonged there.

"Drove me out," Tom said, after Stu told him to repeat the story. Tom's voice was soft and grieving. "Drove Tom out of his nice house and put his feet on the road."

Stu put a shaking hand over his eyes for a second, resting in a way. He glanced over at Nick, who was now visibly trembling. He was shaking uncontrollably, almost as though they were in the Arctic. Maggie was the opposite, a vision of stillness. Her skin had an ashy, sickly pallor making her almost look like a wax figure. She stared ahead, towards the door. She did not avert her gaze. Larry had not yet lifted his head.

"Nick, I don't know if I can finish this," Stu said helplessly.

"Finish," Tom said rapidly, out of nowhere. "Don't leave me out here in the dark." Stu's eyes widened, and he shook his head a little. But then he went on.

"And you'll come back when the moon is full. Not most of the moon, all of the moon. You'll come back East. Back home?"

"Come back when the moon is full. Not the half moon, not the fingernail moon, but the full moon," Tom repeated back.

"That's very good. I want you to wake up in a few seconds, okay?"

"Okay."

"When I ask about the elephant, you'll wake up, okay Tom?"

"Okay."

Stu sat back with a long sigh, running his hands down his face in exasperation. "Thank God that's over. Did you know that might happen Nick?"

Nick, who had uncovered his eyes and was now looking to Stu, shook his head slowly.

"Wake him up, Stu," Larry muttered, his head finally lifting. His eyes were red, but his voice was no longer as watery. "Please God, wake him up."

"Tom?", Stu asked, leaning forward.

"Yes?"

"Would you like to see an elephant?"

Tom's guileless blue eyes shot open. He raised his head and immediately started to chatter. "See? I told you it wouldn't work. Tom Cullen doesn't fall asleep in the middle of the day!"

Nick ripped a note off his pad and handed it to Stu. "Nick says you did real good," Stu told Tom.

Tom looked to Nick with a smiling face. "Did I stand on my head like last time?"

"No, Tommy. You did some even better tricks this time," Larry said in bitter shame, wiping at his eyes and sniffing. He looked as if he'd seen a ghost...Had he?

Nick faked a smile, then looked down at the floor. His cheeks burned with regret. Maggie continued to stare off into space, feeling as though she were on the edge of sanity. To further support this theory, she heard a crow squawking rapidly somewhere outside. It sounded eerily like a laugh.


	19. Chapter Twelve: Part Two

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Three:** _August 1990_

 **Chapter Twelve:** Part Two

The sunset on the evening of August 20 had a reddish hue, instead of the usual pinkish gold. The sky and few clouds glowed in a shimmery amber as they neared the edge of town in Ralph's old Chevrolet, and it reminded Maggie of the color of the blood that had exploded from the soldier's eye when she shot him. She leaned her head against the window pane, trying to push the thoughts away. She was tired. While she hadn't really had a good night's sleep in a while, especially not since arriving in Boulder, last night was the worst of all. Topped only by the night she spent sleeping on the bench immediately after turning the soldier into a royal mummy.

In the dream, there was just so much fire. There had been three that night, the last of course being the something in the closet. But the first two were new, and extremely unsettling to say the least.

There was an airfield somewhere, somewhere in Vegas. Out far into the desert. It was hot there to begin with, even before the fire. But, in the dream, she was riding something, a scooter or a moped. There was sand chafing away at her ( _whose?_ ) sunburnt skin, and hysterical cackles were escaping her. She looked back over whoever's shoulder to hear a bang, and an eruption of fire. The sky blazed with red flames, and the sun seemed to be almost one with the explosion. Maggie felt as though she was standing on the surface of the sun, or floating or something. There was no real way to describe the feeling.

"I'M SOOOORRRRRRRRRYYYYYYYYY!" screamed the voice of whoever's body Maggie was inhabiting. Maggie felt the lunacy of this person invade her, and the deep internal pain. No, it was more than pain, it was longing.

"MY LIFE FOR YOU!" the body riding the moped exclaimed, and then Maggie was somewhere else.

She was on a mountain. A mountain that looked uncannily like the one she'd seen the eye opening on. The air was frigid, and the wind bit ferociously at Maggie's naked cheeks. Her nose was raw and dripping, and she crossed her arms tightly in a futile effort to protect herself from the wind. Over the many mountains, she could she a glinting light in the distance. It was night, but the lights of whatever city it was ( _Vegas)_ were illuminating a small bubble in the middle of the pitch blackness. She looked down to find a womanly body, one that in daylight she may have been able to positively identify as her own, but in the darkness she couldn't be sure.

Another explosion sounded through the valley below the many mountains ahead, but none were as tall as the one she stood on. She saw a single crow flap hastily away from the growing mushroom cloud, but not another living creature was to be seen. The bright orange, noxious fire which billowed in a cloud of smoke from Vegas had that distinct look: an atomic bomb. For the second time since the superflu hit, Maggie was reminded of the precautionary videos from the cold war she'd been shown in her early school days.

( _DUCK AND COVER!_ )

She started to cough as a mist of the radioactive fumes reached her, the poison reaching deep inside her lungs. She knelt as she coughed, seeing what had once been Vegas literally dissolve before her eyes.

After that, she was transported to the dream of the something in the closet once again. It was the same as every other time, and each time it rocked her just as much.

She awoke to find herself safe in her bedroom, the cool Boulder air blowing in through the window. They always opened it a crack at night to keep the room from getting stuffy. She breathed in through her nose, and out through her mouth. She reminded herself that this was not Vegas, and the air was not toxic. Nothing bad was going to happen. At least not that night. She checked the wristwatch on her nightstand. It read exactly midnight.

. . .

Maggie was somewhere in between wakefulness and a light doze when the truck reached a country road on the West side of town. The sounds seemed louder, and she almost felt like she was dreaming. It was the day Tom Cullen was to go West, to Maggie it seemed, it was also the day the opposition would start. The day that the war between Vegas and the Free Zone would begin. Dayna Jurgens and the Judge had left earlier that day, but Tom Cullen was to walk at night. After the hypnosis, they'd told Tom once again of the plan, and he vehemently agreed. He packed a few things with the help of Nick and Maggie, and Ralph let Tom borrow his hat. But, Tom had to give it back when he came home, Ralph had said. This made both Maggie and Nick visibly wince, but they'd tried to remain in good spirits so they wouldn't upset Tom. And while Tom seemed just as happy as always, Maggie thought she saw a cloud of fear lingering around him. Or maybe dread was a better way to put it. That was something they all felt really, because now it was really happening. They were starting the fight.

"You ready, Tom?" Ralph asked amiably as they all stepped out of the truck. He was scratching absentmindedly at his newly hatless head. He was balding pretty severely underneath.

"Laws yes. The sooner Tom Cullen leaves, the sooner he can come home," Tom said. He and Nick went to the back of the truck, getting Tom's bike out. It was new one. The one he'd been traveling on across the country had very worn tires. Then they all edged their way back to the front of the car, a somber silence filling the chilly air.

Tom hugged Ralph wordlessly, then Maggie. Last was Nick, and Nick was the longest. Maggie saw Nick's eyes filling with tears, but he was trying his best to blink them away. Tom pulled away from Nick, resettling his new hat on his blond head. A hollow wind blew past them, making Maggie shiver, her lips nearing blue. Now, it was freezing in Boulder at night. At least to Maggie, who was accustomed to temperatures in the 80's until at least the middle of September. It was no more than fifty right now. She wrapped her long wool cardigan around herself tighter.

"Well, bye, I guess," Tom said, getting ready to mount his bike. "Tom Cullen's going to see the elephant."

They watched as Tom rode away, none of them speaking. His head bobbed up and over a few hills, but eventually, he was nothing more than a speck. Nick turned away, his fists stuffed into the pockets of his jeans, and his flannel whipping around slightly in the gentle but bitter wind. Maggie put a hand over her mouth and walked towards Nick, as Raph just continued to stare after Tom, who was hardly visible anymore anyway. Maggie put a hand on Nick's shoulder but he shook it away angrily, beginning to walk back towards the car. He got back in the middle and slammed the door loudly. Maggie leaned against the hood of the truck, her hand still over her mouth but her eyes dry. She felt hollow, empty and numb. Ralph was shaking, the cold air chilling his bones. But he did not move from his spot a few paces in front of Maggie. The light was slowly waning, the sky now a damp, burnt orange. Soon it would be night.

Nick Andros sat in the middle seat, his head in his hands. He sobbed helplessly, his breath hitching in quick, harsh gasps. He was crying so hard that he felt sick. _Who the fuck am I?_

 **Author's Note** : And there we have the end of part three! Things are about to get pretty chaotic. If you've read the book you'll know what's about to happen. *sobs quietly and contemplates life for a moment*

Also, I just couldn't get to posting yesterday. I'm sorry my loves. But, that does mean you'll get two chapters today! Yay! Not quite yet, but by the end of the night it should be up.

But anyway, I hoped you enjoyed this latest installment! I guess I went pretty crazy on the dream sequences in this chapter, huh? PLEASE review and let me know what you think about it! Thank you so much for reading!

Have a great day!

Peace and love.


	20. Chapter Thirteen: Part One

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Four:** _September 1990_

 **Chapter Thirteen:** Part One

It's true when they say time heals all wounds. Or, well, _most_ wounds. And by the evening of September 2, Nick and Maggie were both feeling a little better. But, there was still a wordless longing between them to have Tom Cullen back in town. Things felt different when he wasn't there, less bright and cheerful. It was almost elemental, like they had lost a whole color. The nights full of tears had pretty much ceased, but Maggie's dreams continued. The something in the closet would return nearly every night, along with a couple more visions from her internal kaleidoscope of terror. Usually a variation of Colleen in the green dress, or the royal mummy soldier. Or, of course, _someone_ out in the desert. That was thrown into the mix quite a lot too.

That night, she sat at the card table in Ralph Brentner's living room, Nick's hand wrapped protectively around her own. They had actually, grown even closer because of the situation with Tom Cullen. The long nights usually ended with some comforting, sex, and then falling asleep wrapped around each other as usual. They had, however, stopped opening the windows at night. It was just too damn cold. Mother Abagail was gone, Tom was gone, their old lives were gone. They were all they really had as constants for each other. He was rubbing circles circles on her palm with his callused thumb, and Maggie felt warm. They were just getting settled in for another meeting. It was around a quarter past eight and the wind that night was icy. Maggie smiled a little and pecked Nick's cheek just as Frannie and Stu sat down to the table, completing the committee line-up.

Nick smiled back, but he didn't feel it. There was something heavy weighing on his chest, something that was making it just a little bit harder for him to breathe. He was anxious and jittery, the only thing to keep him from panicking was the circles he drew on Maggie's hand with his thumb. He knew today was a good day, everyone seemed, in fact, uncommonly happy. But something was off. Something was coming.

About ten minutes passed, and all that was achieved was Ralph reading off the minutes from the last meeting, and starting to recite the schedule for tonight's meeting. And by that time, 8:25 according to Maggie's watch. Maggie had begun to feel uneasy. She felt warm and light headed, almost as if she had a fever. And her hands were starting to shake. Nick noticed her discomfort and looked over at her nervously. She felt it too. The something.

"And we'll have to talk about the progress being made by the burial committee…" Ralph read off monotonously. Today was not a milestone meeting, it was just to make sure everything in the Free Zone was running smoothly. But just as he was about to finish the schedule, Ralph was cut short by the revving of motorcycles outside. It was getting closer.

Suddenly, Fran shot up from her set, her hands instinctively rubbing at her now five months pregnant belly. She also felt it, her face was pale and beads of sweat popped out of her forehead.

"Everyone!" she said, her voice trembling. "We have got to get out of here…. _right now!"_

Frannie went as fast as she could, half jogging, half waddling. She said nothing more as she rushed out of the living room, towards the front door. The motorcycle engines continued to approach, but then stopped abruptly right outside the door. Stu furrowed his brows, then ran after Frannie. And soon they all felt the something. They all ran, straight out of Ralph Brentner's house and into the darkness and bitter cold of a night in Boulder.

All that were left were Maggie and Nick, both standing immobile in the middle of the living room for a moment.

"This is it Nick!" Maggie shouted, starting to cry. Her head was pounding as she turned Nick to face her. "It's the something in the closet! We have to get out of here! Something very bad is gonna happen!" She tugged at the sleeve of his blue flannel, but he only shoved her toward the door.

 _GO!_ he motioned, waving her away.

"Please!" Maggie screamed, tears streaming down her face. But she ran anyway. She had to. And she knew then, she knew what was happening in her dream. She was Nick, he was going to look in the closet and the closet would explode. She was sobbing as she sprinted past the front lawn and out to the sidewalk, where the crowd of motorcycles were. Frannie, Stu, and Larry were still standing on the front lawn. Along with Dick Ellis and Susan Stern. But Maggie could hardly see any of them, or anything around her. She felt once again as though she were living underwater.

She approached Ralph, who stood talking to the motorcyclists.

"Maggie!" Ralph said with his eyes wide as she ran up to them. "Can you believe it? Mother Abagail is back!"

Maggie wasn't listening, all she could hear was the blood pumping in her ears.

( _You ain't seen the devil yet._ )

( _LAURA BETTER RUN!_ )

"Ralph, NICK IS STILL INSIDE!"

. . .

On the top of the hill overlooking the Boulder Free Zone, Harold Lauder and Nadine Cross sat on an old wooden picnic table. Nadine's hair had grown increasingly white since arriving in the Free Zone. Now the strands of ebony were equal to those of pure white. She sat hunched over, her arms wrapped around her middle. Harold stood on to of the table, like some military leader victorious after a grueling war. He held a walkie-talkie in his hand, and his watch read 8:30.

"It's time," he said to Nadine.

He clicked the _SEND_ button on the walkie-talkie, then began to speak. "This is Harold Emery Lauder. I do this of my own free will."

He took the other device off of the table hastily, dropping the walkie-talkie on it's cracking wood surface with a _plunk_. He took the small box with the cacophony of wire, then pressed the red button in the center. A blue-white glow lit up below them, that slowly burned into an orange-yellow cloud of flames, illuminating the dark, desolate sky.

. . .

Nick rifled through the box of scarves, the clock behind him on the wall reading 8:29. He'd known it was in the closet before Maggie told him. The feeling came from everywhere and nowhere. Then, he found it, its red light blinking smugly. He knew what it was, but there was no time to stop it. He ran.

( _NICK ANDROS RUNS_ )

As he reached the front door, bolting out and towards Maggie. He saw her standing on the sidewalk with her head buried in her hands. _We might make it,_ he thought hazily. _Just gotta get a little further away from the hou-_

The house erupted in a mass of fire. Maggie's ears exploded with the force of the sound, momentarily deafening her. She felt a rush of scalding air, and a few pieces of rubble scratched tiny cuts on her cheeks, but she was otherwise unscathed. Once she could hear a little again, she was drawn to the sound of yelling. She ran forwards in the yard, Stu stood screaming over a couch that Frannie was underneath. Larry was trying to help Stu get the couch off of her, but Stu just punched him in the face instead. He was hysterical. They all were.

But Maggie only saw this through the corner of her eye, because she could see Nick, lying face down in the now slightly charred grass. She rushed to him, and found him lying unconscious, a large gash across his right temple. She rolled him over with all her might, then fell onto the grass with his head in her lap. She sat hunched over him, caressing his left cheek. His breath was coming in shallowly, but she could definitely see his chest moving. She hardly noticed the tears still running down her face, a few dripped off of her chin and plopped onto Nick's serene looking face. He might as well have been sleeping, but Maggie knew it wasn't so. She could hardly hear, hardly think. But she could see, she could see the small fires lighting the grass of the front lawn. She could see a couple burning bodies.

( _Babydoll, no._ )

She could see Stu sitting on the sidewalk, staring towards the rubble that only a few minutes ago had still been a house. Ralph and Larry, also unharmed, were just getting the couch off of Frannie, who lay unconscious. She could see Frannie almost completely from the side, her chestnut hair cascading over the grass next to her, and her loose blouse falling over her baby bump. Maggie could practically feel her heart collapsing. Everything was going wrong, everyone was dead. It was over. She thought dimly of the razor that had now most likely been destroyed by the flames.

"HEEEEELP!" Maggie screamed, still cradling Nick's head. "WE NEED A DOCTOR! SOMEONE PLEASE!"

Maggie could never remember what happened after that; the shock was simply too much. But, in her hysteria, she thought she remembered a red eye opening over the house, near the new, waxing moon.

. . .

Doctor George Richardson had been very accomplished in the old world, but the sheer number of patients was really wearing him thin. Weren't there _any_ other doctors in the Free Zone besides himself and his two, relatively new colleagues? But there were seven dead so far, and three more still close to death's door. It was hard to handle, and Doctor Richardson was the one on call when the girl woke up. Her husband (they didn't really have husbands and wives anymore through ceremony, because there was no point with no laws and bigger things to deal with, but through commitment it was used.) was already there. Hell, he was there all the time. They had done away with any form of visiting hours.

The power had only come back on just a little while ago, but they already had most of their medical devices hooked up. The steady _beep...beep...beep_ of a monitor came from only one room, however. It was the boy with the dark hair. He was much worse off than the girl. But, Mother Abagail was definitely the closest to death. She had come from the woods on the night of the bombing, right into Canyon Boulevard Park. Having been in the woods for two whole weeks, the ancient woman was now understandably very frail. She had maybe an hour, maybe a day, nobody could be sure.

Most of her hair was gone, her skin far more wrinkled than before. Her bones were like glass, but surprisingly, none of them had broken throughout her time in the woods. The real problem was the malnutrition and dehydration. Obviously she had found _some_ water in the woods, because she had managed to survive. But, it hadn't been enough and had most likely made her sick at one point. It appeared she have been eating sticks, plants, and other crude forms sustenance. Her skin was now a paler, ashier shade. She was only a shell of a person, and she was sure to die soon enough. But, in a way, it was okay. She was a tired old woman, one hundred and eight for crying out loud!

The dark-haired boy, Nick Andros, seemed sadder. Only twenty-two according to his wife, who was there constantly just like with the girl. It still wasn't clear the exact cause of the coma, whether it be lack of oxygen from the smoke inhalation, or the force of impact when he was thrown from the house by the blast. Either way, he was unconscious and unresponsive. His wife had immediately said six months. If he didn't wake up within six months they would pull the plug. Well, there really was no plug because this particular coma case needed no ventilator. But, they could still do lethal injection. She said he wouldn't want to stay like that, even if he _might_ wake up one day. It would be too late, or at least, according to the girl it would be. And so it seemed, in the four days since the bombing, she had been there all the time. Only going home to change and brush teeth, and things like that. She even slept there, in that uncomfortable hospital chair. They were looking into moving one of the couches into that room as a surprise for her. She just sat there and stared at him. All day. It was painful to watch, and the nurses usually avoided going in the room when she was there. Especially the ones that had known her before. They said she was like a nothing now. She may as well have been the one in the coma.

But, those first four days seemed to be an oddity after the girl woke up. The day the girl woke up, things changed. Mother Abagail woke up soon after, and Nick's wife became less of a nothing. Although she took a little longer to get back, she got back a little that first day. It was evening, and the pinkish light glowed through the large hospital windows. Soon after she awoke, the others gathered. The nurses kept calling them the 'specials,' but George had no idea why.

. . .

Stu was there when Frannie woke up. Well, of course he was. He'd been there practically every second since the explosion four days ago. She hadn't been completely out the whole time, she'd woken up in a haze a few times, when they'd fed her and make her drink water and other things. But that all seemed like a fever dream. When she woke up for real, she was really up. Frannie cleared her throat at first, noticing how raw it was instantly and grimacing. Stu was in the big green chair next to her bed, taking a nap. But he hadn't been able to sleep very much since the bombing.

Frannie tried to sit up, but only gasped in pain. Her neck was the worst. It was as though her entire spinal cord had been replaced with a flaming rope, and she could barely move at all. She gingerly raised her arms to her stomach, and felt an irrational sense of relief when she felt the baby bump was still there. She thought it would just be gone, blown off by the blast. But, her eyes were still welling up. What if the baby was stillborn now? She thought oddly that it might be better that way, to get it over with before the baby had a chance to come out and then die of the superflu.

"Stu…" Frannie rasped, not getting above a weak whisper. Had she been screaming? She couldn't remember, but she thought she had. Maybe it was just a dream. What she did remember, what she remembered that she knew was real, was hazy. Then it came to her: _Nick._ Nick was still in the house.

With her eyes wide, she tried again with all her might. "STU!"

It came out only a little above her normal speaking voice, still broken and weak, but it did the trick. Stu started awake, his eyes frantic and his hair messy. He immediately went to her, grabbing her hands and kissing her. She whimpered a little at the small movements, and he looked at her apologetically. He called in Doctor Richardson, who explained the dilemma.

She had whiplash, pretty bad at that, but the baby was just fine. Frannie wouldn't be able to do much for at least six weeks, maybe ten. Frannie was just glad the baby wasn't due sooner than that. Then he told her about Nick. And of course, about Mother Abagail, who (Frannie hadn't been able to notice having no neck mobility) was lying in the other hospital bed next to her. Frannie felt hot tears snake down her cheeks, but she made no effort to wipe them away. She felt numb, she felt like everything they had built had come crashing down overnight. And, she felt responsible. The Doctor told her about Harold and Nadine, about how they hadn't been seen since the bombing and were presumed to be in Vegas. Or, at least, very close to Vegas by now.

All the while, as Frannie was brought up to date, Stu gathered everyone together. He brought Maggie, who still wasn't responding to anyone much, from Nick's room down the hall. He sent her to go get Ralph, Glen, Larry, and Lucy and bring them to their hospital room. He felt like something was about to happen, something big. It was almost the same sense that Nick Andros had had before the bombing. Maggie, with dark circles under her eyes and her skin a ghostly pale, obliged. She hadn't been eating much, and was starting to lose too much weight. She was practically more of a skeleton than Nick now was. The warmth about Maggie, the quality Nick had loved so much, was gone.

She felt so sad, it was like she couldn't breathe. She didn't want to breathe, and every night contemplated the razor once again. The sitting and staring was all she could manage to do, watching him. He was almost like a mannequin, as if he wasn't a person anymore. She wanted him to wake up, to come back, but she had the sneaking suspicion that he never would. That's partly where the six month deadline came from, just to put him out of his misery. As well as the fact that Nick and Maggie had talked about this kind of thing before, what to do if one of them was gone. Or, in this case, going. To make matters worse, she was still having the dreams. Different kinds of dreams, now. At least for the past three nights. And, of course, Mother Abagail was dying. She felt like nothing good could ever happen, that all there was in the end was badness. Didn't all the signs point to that?


	21. Chapter Thirteen: Part Two

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Four:** _September 1990_

 **Extra Disclaimer** : Many of the lines for this portion of the chapter are taken directly from the book. It was another very important scene and I felt that it shouldn't be tampered with too much.

 **Chapter Thirteen:** Part Two

By seven o'clock, everyone had gathered in the hospital room shared by Mother Abagail Freemantle and Fran Goldsmith. The Doctor had left the room. And Mother Abagail had awoken, her eyes unchanged. They were warm and kind, and _humble_. She was half sitting up, with a pillow propped behind her. She was nothing more than skin and bone, and her breathing was dry and shallow. The IV needle stuck halfway out of her skin, simply because there was no other place for it to go. Maggie stood in the left corner of the room, near Frannie's bed. Frannie was also sort of sitting, her back resting on Stu's chest as he sat behind her on the bed. She'd taken some painkillers, and was feeling a little better. Larry stood at the end of Mother Abagail's bed with his arm around Lucy's waist. Ralph and Glen sat in chairs against the wall that was opposite the beds. There was silence at first, then Mother Abagail turned straight to Fran, in the bed on her left.

"You're quick with child," Mother Abagail whispered. Her voice still had the rasp, the one that reminded Maggie of an old crackling fire in that moment. She remembered kissing Nick by the fire, and pushed the memory away. She stared at Mother Abagail unflinchingly.

"Yes...how…" Frannie began.

"Shhhhh…" Mother Abagail said. "But you're pain. Look out the window."

Frannie did. She saw before her a nursery scene, instead of the evening Boulder sky. There was a crib, a mobile with planets and stars above it. A high chair and a changing table, along with a big rocking chair. They were all blue, and they were all _empty._ Frannie realized the emptiness in sudden horror, and felt as though a strong gust of cold wind had brushed past her, blowing her hair back and taking her breath away. Soon, though, the vision melted away. The empty nursery slowly dematerialized back into the hospital parking lot. She turned to Mother Abagail with a little gasp, and discovered that the pain was gone. Everywhere. Her back, her throat, her neck, her head. It was not only dulled, but had disappeared completely. Her face drained of color and her eyes filled with tears. Stu's grasp tightened around Frannie's hands.

"How did….Where's the baby?" Frannie asked hoarsely.

"Stuart is not the baby's father, little girl. But his life is in Stuart and God's hands. If it is to survive, it will have two fathers-"

" _If?_ " Frannie interrupted.

"I'm not in the way of knowing that," Mother Abagail said, waving her trembling hand a little in dismissal. Frannie was speechless, still stunned by her new lack of pain.

"Gone," was all Frannie managed to mutter.

"What, hon?" Stu asked.

"The whiplash...the pain…the pain is gone."

A silence filled the room, everyone waiting for someone to continue the conversation. Frannie was looking at her hands almost as if she were high, still in shock. Everyone else looked at the floor in embarrassment and dread, except for Maggie. She continued to stare towards Mother Abagail, and almost wasn't surprised when Mother Abagail turned suddenly to lock eyes with her. Maggie's cheeks heated up, her stomach did a flip, and she nervously tucked her wavy hair behind her ears.

"You, too, are in pain," Mother Abagail said softly. Maggie said nothing, and her gaze never wavered.

"The thought of giving up has occurred to you. To go home to glory. To take yourself. But you are selfish and a coward. You too, sin in pride. Your faith has been tested, and you retreat. It is shameful," Mother Abagail whispered in slight disgust. Maggie felt her anger rising, but knew it was no use. It seemed her time for self pity was going to need to be over. She had to get back to the new real world.

"But, the Lord forgives, and so does Abby Freemantle. You, child, shine harder than anyone I ever saw. You can see a light that I cannot, and you've always known what is to come."

Maggie put a hand over her mouth, but still did not speak. Mother Abagail looked away from her, letting her eyes wander over all of those in the room.

"Mother, father, wife, husband," Mother Abagail said. "Set against them, the Prince of High Places, the lord of dark mornings. I sinned in pride, and so have you all. Ain't you it said, put not your faith in the lords and princes of this world?"

This question was answered with silence. They all watched her intently.

"Electric lights ain't the answer, Stu Redman. CB radio ain't it either, Ralph Brentner. Sociology won't end it, Glen Bateman. And you doin' penance for a life that's long since closed it's book won't stop it from comin', Larry Underwood. And your child won't stop it either, Fran Goldsmith. The bad moon has risen. You propose nothing in the sight of God."

Mother Abagail once again looked around, her eyes lingering a little longer on Maggie. She had finally figured out the something about Maggie: it was the shine. The shining light of God. That girl had practically all of it in her. Maggie stared back into Mother Abagail's ancient face, a face that had seen enough for ten lifetimes. Mother Abagail smiled a little, but a pit of despair rested coolly within her. Then her eyes continued to survey the room, a small tear rolling down her dry, leathery cheek.

"God disposes as He sees fit. You are not the potter, but merely the potter's clay. Mayhap the man in the West is the wheel on which you will be broken. I am not allowed to know."

Ralph moved forward, his head feeling a draft with his lack of hat. He sat down on Mother Abagail's bedside, clutching her bony, cold fingers in his own.

"What should we do, Mother?" he asked desperately.

Mother Abagail let out a long, whistley sigh. "God didn't bring you folks together to make a committee or a community. He brought you this far only to send you further, on a quest. He means for you to try and destroy this Dark Prince, the Man of Far Leagues."

( _You ain't seen the devil yet._ )

 _She will die on the wrong side of the river._ Maggie remembered sharply from Tom's hypnosis, immediately causing her eyes to sting with tears. God, did she miss Tom. And Nick. She wished for that first week they were traveling, just the three of them. Hadn't times been simpler then? Her stomach churned again as she remembered, and she let out a little shudder. Nobody noticed.

"I thought it was Nick and Maggie to lead you," Mother Abagail continued. "But He's taken Nick-although not all of Nick is gone yet, it seems to me. No, not at all. And you can't have one of 'em without the other. It is not Maggie either. The Irish Catholic who shines. She will stay, but she will also play a part. She always has. Perhaps even the biggest part. But you must lead, Stuart. And if it's His will to take Stu, then you must lead, Larry. And if He takes you, it falls to Ralph."

"Looks like I'm riding drag again," Glen said, "What-"

" _Lead?_ " Frannie interrupted coldly. "Lead where?"

"Why, west, little girl," Mother Abagail said simply. "West. You're not to go. Only these four."

" _No!"_ Frannie said, wanting to spring to her feet. Stu's arms restrained her. He whispered soothing words in her ear to try to calm her.

"Frannie's right. She needs Stu here," Maggie said, feeling for Frannie's situation. "I can go in Stu's place. After all, you said I could play the biggest part. Maybe this is the part I'm meant to play."

"Oh, no," Ralph said, shaking his head softly and looking up from Mother Abagail's bedside to face her. "That is no place for a woman."

Maggie's brows furrowed, her eyes narrowing. She took a step forward out of the corner, fire in her eyes. She had had about enough of the sexism in the old world and the new world. That was one of the things she had loved about Nick, he saw her as an equal.

"Excuse me?!" Maggie exclaimed. "I shot and killed a fucking soldier, Ralph! Long before I was with anyone, so I think I'm pretty damn good at taking care of myself by now! I don't need Nick with me, I can do a fan-fucking-tastic job leading the way, as long as Stu can stay here with Fran and the baby."

"Honey," Mother Abagail said from her spot on the bed. She remembered the vibes she had gotten from Maggie on that first night, and felt they rang true now more than ever. _She knows when to fight._

Maggie's eyes shot to Mother Abagail, her cheeks heating up in frustration.

"You would be the one to lead, Maggie, if the Lord had taken Nick completely. And he may be on his way out, but he sure ain't there yet. I'm in the way of knowing that without you here, he ain't never gonna come back from where he is. I've not been told if he ever will, but without you here, there ain't no chance. And I know that you know this is the way. I know you can feel it."

Maggie crept back against the wall, her hand over her mouth again, stifling a soft sob. It was just too hard. They couldn't go West! _He_ was there, the dark man. And he wasn't human.

( _His name is Legion and he is the king of nowhere._ )

( _Nowhere man, the world is at your command._ )

But, in a way, just like Mother Abagail had said, she knew this was the way. It was the only way, and it was the path they had been on since deciding to travel to Nebraska in the first place. Maybe even before that. Maybe always.

"WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?" Frannie exclaimed, her eyes blazing. "That the four of them are just supposed to deliver themselves in his hands? So he can just hang them on crosses and then just walk over here next summer and kill everyone? No. I won't see Stu or anyone else sacrificed to your killer God. Fuck Him."

" _Frannie!_ " Stu gasped. The rest just watched her, marveling at the outburst. But Maggie still stood with her hand over her mouth, tears rolling silently down her cheeks. She stared at the yellowing hospital floor. She understood, she understood exactly what Frannie was feeling. She had felt it too. They all had. But, she also knew that Mother Abagail was right. To Maggie, everything was now finally starting to make sense. She could finally begin to see the meaning in the dreams. At least, the ones from before the bombing.

"Killer God! _Killer God!_ " Frannie spat, raving. "Billions dead in plague, and millions more after! We don't even know if the children will live. Isn't He done yet? Does it just have to go on and on until the Earth belongs to the rats and the roaches?"

Maggie shivered. ( _He's everywhere, in the snakes, and the weasels. And the_ rats _._ )

"He's no God," Frannie continued. "He's a demon, and you're his witch."

"Little girl."

" _DON'T CALL ME THAT!_ "

After Fran's eruption, silence once again fell in the room. Maggie's hand still over her mouth, and her eyes glassy. She looked to Frannie sympathetically. She wished for Nick. He would go. He would go with her to Vegas and stand with her in the face of the dark man. His real face. He would probably die, but he would die with honor. Not after six months of being a vegetable, only to have the plug pulled on him. It didn't seem right. The death was not equal to the man. Not in Maggie's eyes.

Fran sat fuming, her cheeks red with anger and her heart thudding rapidly in her chest. She sat up straighter, and looked around. They all looked so broken. So _old._ Larry's eyes were dark and stormy, the glee was gone from Ralph's face, along with the hat from his head. Glen's hair was now all the way gone, and Stu's brown beard had little silver whiskers appearing in it. Lucy's face was sallow, and dark circles hung below her eyes in eerie half moons. Maggie's tendons showed plainly under her thin layer of skin, her collar bones protruded sharply, and she was visibly shaking. It was the skeleton crew. _The special skeleton crew,_ Frannie thought and almost giggled.

"Stu isn't going West," Fran said matter-of-factly, turning back to Mother Abagail. Maggie scoffed a little, her eyes filling with tears. She covered her face with both hands, trying not to sob. They were going to go, they had to. She could almost see it, those four men walking along a desolate road. Into the mouth of a wolf. Maggie felt like she had nothing left inside her except tears, like she was lost at sea.

"Fran. Just stop. Please just let her talk and we'll listen to what she has to see," Stu said softly. His jaw was tense. Frannie sighed angrily through her nose, but nodded. She deflated against Stu, still in slight shock that the pain from the whiplash was gone.

"You are to go West," Mother Abagail said quietly. "You are to take no food, no water. You are to go this very day, and in the clothes you now wear. You are to go on foot. I am in the knowing way that one of you will not reach your destination, one will fall. But I don't know which of you it is to be. I am also in the way of knowing that the rest will be taken before this man Flagg, who is not a man at all but a supernatural being. I don't know if it's God's will for you to defeat him. I don't know if it's God's will for you to ever see Boulder again. That is not for me to see. But he is in Las Vegas, and you must go there. It is there that you will make your stand. You will go, and you will not falter. Yes. With God's will, and your own, you will stand."

There was momentary silence.

"That's it," Mother Abagail croaked. "I've said m'piece."

Frannie shook her head slowly, her hands clutching Stu's.

"Mother," Glen said. He sounded weary. He was an old man, but he had to be part of it. "We're not 'in the way of understanding,' if you see what I mean. We're not...blessed by the closeness to you. We're not connected to whatever is controlling all this in the way that you are. If we go there….go West…we'll likely just be slaughtered, by the first pickets we come to."

"Have you no eyes?" Mother Abagail asked incredulously. "You've just seen Fran healed by the hand of God, through me. And through a vision." She glanced at Maggie, whose head was still in her hands, and then looked back to Glen. "Do you think his plan for you is to just be shot down by one of this Dark Prince's minions?"

"But, Mother-"

"No," she raised her hand to him. "It's not my place to argue with you. Or to convince you. It's only to put you in the way of understanding God's plan. Listen."

And suddenly, the voice of Glen Bateman arose from Mother Abagail's scrawny, withered throat. All the mouths in the room hung open. Maggie didn't remember when she'd heard him say those things, maybe at one of the committee meetings, but she knew it was his voice.

"Mother Abagail calls him the devil's pawn," the robust voice said from Mother Abagail's wasted chest and toothless mouth,. "Maybe he's just the last magician of rational thought, gathering the tools of technology against us. Maybe he's something more, something darker. I only know that he _is_. And I no longer think that sociology or psychology, or any other ology will put a stop to him. I think only pure magic will do it. Good magic, our magic."

Glen Bateman gaped at her.

"Is that a true thing or are those the words of a liar?" Mother Abagail asked with her eyes narrowed.

"I don't know if it's true or correct, but I know those are my words," Glen replied shakily.

"Trust. All of you... _trust._ Larry...Ralph...Glen...Maggie...Stu...Frannie. Most partic'lary Frannie. Trust and obey the word of the Lord."

"Do we have a choice?" Larry asked bitterly. His eyes were watery, but he spoke the words through gritted teeth. His arm was held securely around Lucy's waist.

Mother Abagail's eyes lit up in surprise, and she even chuckled a little. It was an ancient sound, and it made Maggie cringe. It felt like everything was ending. _Again._ She lifted her head from her hands finally, her cheeks flushed.

"A choice? There's always a choice. That's God's way, always will be. Your will is still free, and you should do as you will. But... _this is what God wants of you._ "

 _Frannie's right. Fuck God,_ Maggie thought venomously, and instantly regretted it. She had to stop kidding herself, this is what was in the stars. This was it. It was _always_ that way.

"The Bible says David managed to do the job on Goliath," Ralph chimed in. "I'll go if you think it's right, Mother."

"Me...m-me too," Larry said, putting a hand to his forehead as if it ached. Glen opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off my a deep, heavy sigh. Lucy went limp in Larry's arms. She had fainted.


	22. Chapter Thirteen: Part Three

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Four:** _September 1990_

 **Chapter Thirteen:** Part Three

By Maggie's watch, it was past four in the morning on September 7 by the time she got back to the hospital. It had been a _very_ long night. Mother Abagail was dead, for good. It happened at half past eight; when the frail, bony old woman's chest stopped rising. Maggie thought it was odd to see her there, just a dead woman. She had seemed like so much more. But nothing gold can stay, as they say. After that, they had gone to the edge of town, and there was a small send-off for the four dead men walking. Frannie had become hysterical, but eventually Stu calmed her down, and they managed to leave just after eleven. They would have left in the morning, but Mother Abagail's instructions had been too specific for that.

( _You are to go this very day._ )

In a strange way, Maggie had felt better after they left, and after Mother Abagail was dead. It was happening, the bad stuff was in motion. The waiting was over. She walked Lucy and Frannie back to the house that Lucy and Larry shared, along with Leo. Everyone figured it was better if Frannie didn't stay alone, with the baby and everything, so she was going to move her things into the guest room the following day. They stayed up talking for a long time, mostly about their lives before the superflu. Everyone had a silent agreement not to talk about the things that were happening now. Mostly for fear of setting Frannie off again.

But eventually, Lucy and Frannie had both fallen asleep on the couch. Maggie walked solemnly back to the house. She changed into a big maroon sweater, and put her hair in a messy bun. She wanted to walk straight back to the hospital, but it was a cold night and she made sure to put on warmer clothes. She had stayed at the hospital so much for a couple reasons. One, she obviously wanted to be with Nick all the time. Or, at least, the most that she could. Even if he wasn't with her. And, two, because the house was just one big monument to how good things had been for that small window of time. There were just too many pictures. She had to live in the now, and not think about the past. And the now was Nick in a coma.

She plopped down into a chair next to Nick's bed, the same chair she had sat in and slept in since the night of the bombing. She looked at Nick from the side, and the way the moonlight glistened through the window onto his still face. When they'd first brought him from the remnants of the house to the hospital, the doctors had been shocked to find Nick had no burns. Not a single one. All he had was the gash on his temple, and the trauma to his brain.

She sighed heavily, with her eyes full of tears, as she pulled her chair closer to his bed. She stood up a little to brush the hair away from his eyes, and chuckled hollowly.

"Never got a chance to cut that hair did I?" she murmured, then sat back down in the chair. She took one of his large hands and wrapped both of hers around it. Those were the first words she had said to him since the bomb. She had just sat and stared before. It had felt wrong to try and talk to him, because now he really had no way to see what she was saying. But after hearing all that Mother Abagail had said, it felt good. Maybe it would help. She didn't know. But, at that point, Maggie felt ready to try anything.

She sighed again, and sniffed. "Hi. It's been a little while, huh? Yeah. Um, I miss you. It feels like forever since you've been awake. But it's only been four days….I know you can't hear me, but maybe you can see me or something? I don't know. I just feel like I should catch you up to date on everything that's happened."

She paused, wiping away tears with her sleeve and taking another deep breath. "Um, Mother Abagail's dead. It was just a few hours ago, but yeah, she died. It's weird, but there's definitely a part of me that feels empty. It's just like...it's like the superflu is starting all over again kind of. But, when she died, it seemed different. It didn't smell like death like the world did during the superflu. It was just old. It smelled like an attic. Anyway. She's dead. But, she was one hundred and eight. And I think she was tired. I mean, can you imagine? I bet she's been ready since she was eighty.

"And, I think you know about the bomb. But I didn't know if you knew who did it. It was Harold Lauder and Nadine Cross. Y'know, that woman with the white streaks in her hair? They're in Vegas now. Well, I think Nadine is. Remember how I used to have dreams? I mean...still have dreams. Anyway, now I'm not seeing it through someone's eyes. I'm just there, in the sky. Like a bird or something. I've had them about a lot of people. I dreamed that Harold crashed his motorcycle, but Nadine wouldn't save him. And he eventually blew his brains out. He was just lying there on this dusty slope, his head was bleeding and he was wearing those fucking stupid assless chaps he was wearing when he got here."

She had to stop again, and she didn't know if she was crying or laughing. It was the anger, and the surreality. Harold had pretty much killed Nick, and actually killed a few others. But now he was just a corpse in assless chaps. She cleared her throat.

"But then, I saw that Flagg guy with Nadine. He was having sex with her, but she was screaming. And not in the good way. He was raping her, but I think he was trying to implant her with his spawn or something. Maybe Nadine knew, and maybe that's why Mother Abagail didn't trust her. I worry about Fran's baby. I mean, what kind of a world will that kid grow up in, if he does grow up, if Nadine has a baby with the dark man? I don't know.

"Susan, Sue Stern, she died in the blast. And Dick Ellis did too. No one's said it, but I guess the committee's pretty well disbanded by now. I think the Judge and Dayna are dead too. I saw that in one of my dreams these past couple nights. I can't remember when. This whole thing feels like I've been dreaming, like I've been dreaming since this summer started.

"But, anyway. What I was getting to was that...I haven't had any dreams about Tom. And I don't really even know if my dreams are real, they probably aren't. But then, Mother Abagail, before she died, told me that I shined? But that's not the point, I just wanted to be safe and talk to you about something anyway."

She took in a shaky breath, tears now running in streaks down her face and dripping onto the blanket. "Nick...you talk to me in my dreams. Every night since the bomb, you're there...and we just talk. You t-tell me that you love me. And I was just-"

She stopped to sob for a minute, but soon collected herself.

"But I was just wondering if maybe, you could go talk to Tom. In his dreams, you know. He...I want him to come back. And it's nice and all that you come to talk to me, but I think Tom needs it more. You should help him. Because…"

She trailed off, sniffing. "Almost everyone left today. Larry, and Stu, and Glen, and Ralph. They went to go to Vegas. To, I guess, beat the dark man. You should know that too. That's something else that you weren't here for. I wish you were here. Mother Abagail said we were the ones to lead, lead them to the desert. But, obviously, that isn't happening. Everyone is leaving again, Nick. And I just…

"I just wanted to talk to you and tell you about everything, like I said before. And um, yeah. I hope I dream about you again soon. And I've been thinking that maybe I'll start reading out loud to you or something, I don't know. Because Mother Abagail said you aren't all the way gone. And I figured you must be bored, just lying here all day. So I guess I'll start doing that today. I don't really know what else to say. Um...I love you. And I'm gonna try to get some sleep now, because I haven't gotten to sleep since last night. But...if you need anything...I'll be here. But I guess you know that."

Maggie backed up a little, letting go of his hand and watching it fall back to the bed lifelessly. She felt stupid, and dazed, because she really had no idea what to say to him. But she also felt good. It was nice to at least pretend she was talking to him. To tell him about everything. He had the right to be in the loop. She sighed a little, crossing her arms and resting her elbows on the bed. She put her head down on her forearms. She knew her neck would be as stiff as the Dickens in the morning. But she felt closer to him when she slept this way, as she had for the past couple nights. She sighed and thought of Tom Cullen and Nick Andros as she went to sleep. Of their smiling faces as they rode their bikes to Nebraska. _They've gone to see the elephant,_ Maggie thought wistfully. _Both of them_.

 **Author's Note:** Sorry this chapter didn't go up yesterday as promised, but last night kind of got away from me and this was a really long one! I hope you liked it anyway!

Thank you so much for reading! PLEASE let me know what you thought with a review down below!

Peace and love.


	23. Chapter Fourteen: Part One

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Four:** _September 1990_

 **Chapter Fourteen:** Part One

She could see the moon there, and it was full. There was the vague smell of alcohol and sweat hanging in the humid air. Maggie was somewhere above a hotel, outside of a window. Through it, she could see the face of Tom Cullen. He looked wistful, almost like he had during the hypnosis. She could hear the bustle of people in the streets below, even though it was definitely late at night. Maggie thought dimly of the night of the bombing, how the fire lit up the sky and it had almost seemed like daytime.

"Come back when the moon is full…" she heard Tom mutter. "M-O-O-N, that spells moon."

Maggie, though not really in any physical form, felt like crying. He was there, looking at his moon. He was still there. It was the best feeling Maggie had experienced in awhile. Even if her dreams weren't real, as she was still partly convinced they weren't, he could say it there. He could spell moon. Tom Cullen who saved Nick in the tornado, Tom Cullen who was the first good one Maggie saw after the plague, Tom Cullen who had seen the true face of the dark man. Now, he was Tom Cullen, the man who survived the desert.

"That moon is full... laws yes," Tom murmured, still gazing out his window towards that glowing night sky. "Time to go...back home. To see Nick, and Maggie, and Stu, and Frannie! And everyone!"

Maggie had only a little time to feel the heartache this caused her, to remember that Tom would never get to talk with Nick again, or Stu, or maybe anyone. Maybe Tom was already dead, and this was just her own way of trying to feel better about sending him. Her mind making up these dreams. Maggie didn't know, and soon she was somewhere else.

The metallic sound of slot machines filled the air, and there were people everywhere. Everything looked as though it were glimmering in the dim lights; everything was gilded. There were girls walking around in lingerie, holding trays that overflowed with martinis. Most looked no older than seventeen. All the men, most who looked to be in their forties, wore suits and ties. The walls looked like they were made of black marble, and the room was beyond expansive. It seemed to last for miles. She spun around from overhead, as though she were hanging from one of the ostentatious chandeliers, and heard the _ding_ of an elevator. A crowd of people were gathered around the doors, and she knew who was there the second it opened.

He was different from what she had seen in her other dreams, he looked almost like a normal man. He was tall, and robustly built. He had long, dark hair reaching almost to his shoulders. He wore a jean jacket, with a button on each pocket. One a yellow smiley face, the other the face of a pig. Below the cuffs of his weathered jeans, he had a worn set of brown cowboy boots. He reminded Maggie of Hercules in an odd, almost cruel sense. Beside him stood Nadine Cross, her hair now completely white. Her face was horribly sunburnt and peeling. Her expression was blank, and the arm of a one Flagg gripped tightly around her waist.

A man, short and thin, approached a grinning Flagg as the crowd parted for him. A girl trailed behind the short man. She was small, but looked fierce. Her platinum blonde hair was done up in a beehive, and her small, beady eyes darted around feverishly. But she wore a wide, smug grin.

"R.F." the short man said over the noise of the crowd. Maggie recognized the rich voice immediately. It was the one of whoever she had embodied during the dream in which she saw the girl crucified.

( _DRUG ADDICT)_

 _(HE WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD HE WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD!)_

"This girl says she saw the third spy- or knows the third spy or-" the man fumbled through his words.

"Know him? I almost killed him, but then his dummy friend pulled a gun on me. Motherfucker," the blonde girl spat, mumbling the final obscenity.

"Y'know what Lloyd?" Flagg said, not even acknowledging the girl, "It can wait. It's time for me to spent some time with my new bride! Congratulate us, Lloyd! We're newlyweds!"

"But she mentioned a name on the red list...something about a Nick Andros? Yeah. Nick Andros," the short man, apparently Lloyd, continued. Maggie saw Flagg's face darken for just a moment. There was just a small flash of ferocity at the sound of Nick's name. His jaw clenched, and she could almost see the face in her dreams appear in his eyes. But then it was gone, he was back to just a man. Just Randall Flagg.

. . .

She woke up in a haze, her neck cracking as she lifted her head. It was gone, and she was back in the green chair in the hospital room. She looked to Nick, his face serene and motionless as always. He was still there. But was he really? She didn't know. Once again, Maggie was left alone with just the buzzing of the cicadas to comfort her.

. . .

"I love you, Maggie," Nick said. His voice was low and musical, warm like the fire that crackled cozily beside them.

They were back in North Carolina, back in the apartment with the eggshell walls. The fire was contained this time, burning in a pit which sat in the middle of the living room. The ceiling was gone, above them the sky swam with rich shades of blue and purple. There were millions of stars, some shooting across the sky. It was always here when she saw him. She liked it there. It wasn't exactly home anymore, but it felt at least pretty close. There were no more rooms, just that one. All the furniture was gone too, they sat across from each other on an ornate rug. It was a deep burgundy, and decorated with small, intricate scenes of flowers and birds. She wore the outfit she'd donned the day she met Nick and Tom, and he had on one of his usual plaid flannels. Here, his eyes seemed clearer. Like he knew something she didn't.

"Say it again," Maggie whispered, her eyes locked on his in the orangey glow of the fire. She couldn't decide if the air was hot or cold.

"I love you," Nick said once more, his big goofy grin appearing. Maggie thought vaguely of that first picture she'd taken of him, as he held up the ties of a dead man.

She sighed, looking down at their hands. They were intertwined, and they leaned towards each other as their knees touched. His hands felt different now, they weren't rough and callused like before. They were smooth, and even. It was almost as though he wasn't holding her at all, like he were a ghost.

"It's still gonna sound weird no matter how you say it," she said with a small sigh and a smirk. "I love you too."

"I still can't believe I can talk, and I can hear," Nick mused, looking up at the stars. "I can hear your voice. You have no idea what a great voice you have, Maggie. And laugh. Laugh for me again."

"No," she challenged, one eyebrow raised.

"Come on, please?" he whined, flashing puppy dog eyes.

"No, Nicholas," she said, hiding a grin.

"You know you want to."

"No, I don't. I need to talk to you."

"Fine. After you laugh."

"Would you please get serious?"

"Yes. After you laugh...I got it! I'll tell you a joke."

Maggie sighed, then looked up at him doubtfully.

"No, come on, hear me out. What does a clock do when it's hungry?"

"I cannot believe this. You are such a child, Nick Andros," Maggie groaned, but saw him look to her pleadingly. "Alright. Fine. What does a clock do when it's hungry?"

"It goes back four seconds!" Nick exclaimed, his eyes lit up in glee.

Maggie did laugh, despite her best efforts. "Jesus Christ, that's not even a joke. You are the worst."

After a minute, they were both laughing. And eventually, howling with laughter. Maggie almost felt high. She had no idea what was so funny. It was a pretty trippy feeling. She'd never been high, but she figured this might be what it felt like. _I'm Lucy in the sky with diamonds,_ she thought dreamily, and that made her laugh harder. Nick's laugh was similar to his voice, lively and deep. Maggie couldn't believe what a laugh that quiet man contained. Soon enough, they managed to calm down. Maggie saw his eyes soften, his grip on her hands tightening.

"Okay, now. What did you want to talk to me about?"

"I had a dream about Tom."

Maggie saw Nick's jaw tense a little, but otherwise there was no response. His face remained solemn and still. He nodded a little for her to continue.

"He's alive, Nick. I mean, if those dreams are real. Anyway, he's alive and he's coming back, because the moon is full."

"M-O-O-N," Nick said so softly Maggie almost didn't hear it. He wore a guilty smile and he looked down at their hands in shame.

"But, they know. Someone saw him. And they know you too. They said you're on something called the red list. Flagg's list. I saw him too, but he was just a man. I don't know, it was weird."

Nick looked back at her with his dark eyes, and she almost thought she could see the shine of tears. Her face reddened and she went back to staring at their hands. "So, anyway, yeah. If you can, you could go see him and tell him. Or something. I don't know. I just-he's still alive now. He made it this far and maybe you could…"

She looked up to find Nick gone, just vanished. Her eyes widened, and she looked down at her hands again in alarm. There was nothing there. The rug was gone. The furniture was still nowhere to be seen, but the smell of smoke was suddenly suffocating the air. She stood up, clutching her chest as her breathing tightened and she started to cough.

"YOU BURNED ME!" she heard behind her. She whipped around to see Sean's corpse standing there. The one she had seen all those weeks ago on the pier. His body was blacker now, and he seemed to be dissolving to ash in front of her. His voice was his own, not that of the dark man. Maggie's coughs were mixed with shrieks, and she dimly realized she had almost forgotten the sound of his voice. He lumbered over, the singed flesh of his hands grabbing for her, still alight with small blue flames.

( _You ain't seen the devil yet.)_

She gasped for breath, knowing by now her face must've turned blue like the flames. Were blue flames hotter or colder? It was a stupid question, she knew, but she could not for the life of her remember the answer. She backed up as Sean's corpse continued slowly towards her, shouting unintelligible stammers as he shambled. She backed up, unable to think of anything else as she still hacked. She could feel a sharp, cold pain in her chest, and blood rising in the back of her throat. She felt her hip whack something hard, and turned to see the door had returned. Her eyes lit up in salvation, the Sean-corpse momentarily forgotten. She tried to turn it, hard. It wouldn't budge as she continued to jiggle it.

She wasn't thinking anymore, her flight response had now kicked in fully. She was brought back to some vague sense of reality as she heard her now long dead brother's heavy footfalls getting closer to her, and the smell of burning flesh now mixed with that of the smoke. She almost feel the heat radiating off his body as he came ever closer to her. She continued to jiggle the knob futilely, sweat running down her forehead in small drips. She had only somewhat registered the fact that the walls were now on fire, as well as the doorknob. Searing pain enveloped her palm, so hot it almost felt frozen. She didn't scream. She couldn't. The coughing continued. But still, she tried the doorknob. What else was there to do?

"YOU BURNED ME!" the Sean-corpse screamed hoarsely, now very close to her ear. She fumbled with the doorknob still, her arm muscles shaking as the nerves in her hand were burned off. Tears ran down her face and mixed with the sweat. She could barely even see anything anymore, only the chipping white paint of the door which had once opened into her home.

( _Laura better run._ )

 **Author's Note:** And there's part one of chapter fourteen! I went off the radar for a little while after posting so much two weeks ago, but now I'm back! It's almost the end of the story, but never fear. I'm already working on the next one that I will most likely begin publishing at the end of June! Get excited!

But still, this story has yet to finish. The first part of this chapter is more trippy dream sequences, so I'm sorry if you don't like that but they're almost over. I added a lot in to make sure it had a Stephen King-y feel, y'know? Maybe that doesn't make any sense.

Anyway, I hope you liked this half of the chapter. The other half will go up in a few hours! Thank you so much for reading!

PLEASE review to let me know what you thought! Thank you again.

Peace and love.


	24. Chapter Fourteen: Part Two

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Four:** _September 1990_

 **Chapter Fourteen:** Part Two

September 30 was the day. The day of the big fire. Or, night in Maggie's case. The morning had been a pleasant one, the dreams the night before had started out unsettling, but her last dream had been a Nick one. Those seemed to be the only good dreams left these days. In the nights following the dream of the Sean-corpse, she had seen Colleen in the green dress, taking Sean's place in the ratty apartment as it was slowly engulfed in flames. She never could get that pesky door knob to turn. A few times she had thought of her key, but in the three months since she'd left Murphy, she hadn't been able to remember where she'd left it. It had most likely been in the apartment during the fire, but would it have burned? She didn't know, maybe it would just sit there among the pile of ashes for who knows how long. There was something so eerie about that picture to Maggie, for reasons unknown to her. She just couldn't stop seeing it, that one key among nothing but ash. A key that didn't fit any door left in the world.

Stu had been the one to fall, Maggie knew. She'd dreamt of him falling into a canyon of some sort. Glen's dog, Kojak, had stayed with him though. And Glen left him a bottle of pills, but the purpose of them was of some debate. More than four could kill a man. And so Stu sat, in the canyon, his broken leg wrapped in a crude splint. She hadn't dreamt of Tom at all. Not since the night Nick had told her the clock joke. She cracked a small smile as she thought about it, sitting on the couch the nurses had surprised her with two days ago. Maggie was grateful, but it didn't really matter. Even sitting on a king's throne would be uncomfortable if she still had to slowly watch Nick die. Maggie couldn't believe it had been almost a month. Almost a month since she had fallen asleep in a bed beside Nick Andros.

She had not felt so alone in a long time, maybe not since she had been living with her father. That too, had been coming back to her in the dreams. The nights he had worn his rings. She would tell herself he was dead, because he was. He had been dead for years. But what did dead really mean anymore? Almost everyone was dead. And it was clear that even if they were dead, they could come back to you in your dreams. He was still coming after her, ready to check if she was pure and to put more scars on her cheeks. Her mind often thought back to the razor in the bathroom of Ralph's house. Then she would laugh at herself; that house was gone. Just like Nick was now.

That night was uncommonly warm, but the crickets were not singing. Maggie was humming an old Beatles song to herself, hopelessly fighting sleep. The sky was dark, past the point of a deep purple, now painted a deep indigo. Maggie checked her watch, which still worked even after all this time. _At least some things stick around,_ she thought spitefully. It was half past eleven, but that meant almost nothing to Maggie. She'd damn near lost her concept of time, and of night and day. She was afraid to sleep, sometimes giving in during the middle of the day, sometimes late at night. She often wondered what the people of the Free Zone were out there doing now, how they were holding up and moving things along. But, in all honesty, she didn't really care. She didn't see much of a point in doing anything anymore. Everyone's just going to die in the end, right?

Frannie sometimes dropped by Nick's room, and occasionally offered Maggie the spare room at Lucy's house. Maggie always declined. Every time she went out, usually just to change clothes or brush her teeth, she came back feeling guilty. She was the only one left with him, besides the nurses who only checked on him every few hours. He didn't deserve to be left alone, even if he was pretty much dead already anyway. She spent most of her time reading to him. They'd gone through six books already, currently in the middle of _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_ by Hunter S. Thompson. Maggie hoped Nick was enjoying it. ("It's like those Westerns you used to read, except with _a lot_ more drugs," she had told him the day they started reading it.)

Maggie sat with her finger marking the place in her book. She looked around the room, continuing to hum. She wondered dimly how many people had died of the superflu in this same room just a few months before. The walls were just so white, not even eggshell. And the air still had that same antibacterial smell, even though this hospital had no doubt spent a few weeks full of baking bodies before they had arrived and turned Boulder into the Free Zone. _Then again_ , Maggie thought, looking up to the ceiling tiles, _there never were that many bodie here anyway._

She took a shaky breath, her eyes suddenly filled with tears. She threw the book absently to the little table next to her. She got up and sat on Nick's bed, taking his lukewarm hand in hers. He was starting to lose his calluses, and as she noticed this Maggie tried not to think back to her dreams. It wasn't extremely often that Maggie would really talk to Nick, usually only a few remarks in passing. But there were nights when she felt like she needed to. She'd thought about getting a journal, she ultimately decided against it. Why would she want to document this? She'd mostly likely be dead in a few months anyway, when the dark man finally launched his attack. Maggie only vaguely recognized the fact that her life was now just a waiting game. Waiting to see what would happen first: Nick dies and she commits suicide, or the dark man comes from over the dusty hills and murders them all. But she sometimes wondered if she had ever not been waiting, trying to coast through the present to get to a happier future that would never come. Though, didn't everyone live like that? Was there anyone out there who could honestly say they had everything they wanted? Anyone who was truly happy? Maggie didn't think so.

"I miss Mother Abagail," Maggie said hastily, squeezing Nick's hand. She ran her bony fingers through her hair, trying not to look at his face. "I just feel like nothing is ever good. Like, it can't be good. That's not allowed. But, if something breaks that rule and is good, it has to be taken away. Maybe Frannie was right when she called Mother Abagail's God a killer."

She sniffed and uttered a broken, watery laugh. "I mean, I know that's not true. I know I think that's not true. With everything that's happened, y'know. Everything we've seen? Something is there, but maybe it's just _him._ Maybe he pretends to be good, to some people at least, so he can weed out the people who are evil and recruit them. And then he takes the good people, and sort of dangles them on a string, making them think there's actually a good God. And then he'll cut the string. And the good people fall.

"So, I guess that actually _does_ make Frannie right. Jesus, I feel like I never make any sense anymore. But anyway, that makes you wrong. You told me you didn't think there was a God. But, joke's on you Nick. He _is_ real. He's just not what any of us thought he would be. And now he's gonna take you down with him, just like me."

She had to stop and collect herself, letting a few silent tears fall as she leaned her head down. She felt so ashamed of herself, not even sure why. She hardly felt human anymore.

"But who knows? Maybe we'll see each other there. Wherever _there_ is. But, I have a feeling if _he's_ there, our good friend Randall, I mean. Or maybe his boss. If he's there, he's not gonna let us near each other."

She sighed heavily, shivering despite the warm air in the room, not even bothering to wipe the tears from her face. Talking to him wasn't helping, because he wasn't really there to talk to anyway. She felt kind of like a little kid talking to a doll. She took her hand out of his, flopping back onto the brown couch. She crossed her arms over her chest, leaning her head back. Maggie was asleep within minutes, her tear-stained cheeks glistening in the moonlight.


	25. Chapter Fourteen: Part Three

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Four:** _September 1990_

 **Chapter Fourteen:** Part Three

This one came in flashes. First she saw Larry's face, adorned with a new scruff of beard. She saw the three of them, ambling down a sunny, flat, road. Glen, Larry, and Ralph. Larry still had his worn acoustic guitar slung on his back, and they walked hand in hand. She heard whispering somewhere, but she couldn't quite make it out. All the separate voices were jumbled together. She thought she recognized a few, but there were others that were new.

( _I will fear no evil._ )

( _Chief Captain Dragon?_ )

( _TURN BACK_ )

( _His name is Legion and he is the king of nowhere._ )

( _Nowhere man, please listen…_ )

Then it switched and she saw the man from the lobby, the one the dark man had called Lloyd. He stood in front of a jail cell, stiffly pointing a pistol through the bars. Tears were running down his ruddy cheeks, and Randall Flagg stood behind him. Flagg wore his same sickening grin, and he patted Lloyd on the back before turning away. He sauntered down the hallway of the old jail, whistling a tune Maggie didn't recognize. The heels of his cowboy boots made a threatening _clop clop clop_ noise with his jaunty steps.

She saw Glen Bateman, lying face down on a bunk in one of the cells. Blood was pooling around on the mattress, leaving ugly red stains. One of his rough, withered hands had fallen from the bunk, and his knuckles were grazing the cracked concrete floor. It struck Maggie that she didn't even really know him, except that he was an old man who had once been a professor. But seeing him now, he seemed like so much more. He wasn't part of Mother Abagail's specials, not at first, but maybe he was. Maybe you didn't have to be special to do something great, to be important. Maybe it was even better if you weren't special, maybe it was better to make the unremarkable remarkable on your own. Glen Bateman didn't need any help, he could do it himself. And now Glen Bateman was dead.

The whispers were getting louder, turning into shouts.

( _The special skeleton crew._ )

( _I will fear no evil._ )

( _You ain't seen the devil yet._ )

( _Private First Class Greg McAllister_ )

( _MY LIFE FOR YOU!_ )

She thought she saw the red eye flash before her for just a moment, then there were lights everywhere. Lights of a big city. Before her there was a massive crowd of people, sprawling across a big lawn. Then, there were huge, gleaming marble steps. They led up to an unthinkably tall building, decked in gold and white. A large sign on the side of this tower read in blinking lights: **MGM Grand**. _Vegas_ , Maggie knew suddenly.

Behind the top of the marble steps, before the doorway of the tower, there was a glittering fountain. Turquoise water cascaded down over sculptures of angels, all made from white marble. Near these steps were two large contraptions. At first, things were fuzzy and Maggie couldn't see the two people held inside these structures. But she could soon recognize them as Larry Underwood and Ralph Brentner. They had been stripped naked and their ribcages were painfully visible from the miles and miles of walking on minimal food. Their hair had grown longer, along with their scraggly beards.

Maggie thought the saddest thing was that Larry was without his guitar, and Ralph without his hat. They almost seemed like strangers without them, only hollow shells of the men she had known from the Free Zone, and far cries from the ones they had been before the plague. Maggie thought distantly to whom she had been in these three phases of her life: Before Nick, During Nick, and After Nick. Maggie knew it was wrong to use Nick to define herself, but to others, Nick must've been for her what Ralph's hat or Larry's guitar had been. They were parts of them, just like he had become a part of her and vice versa. _Or maybe it's my watch,_ she thought, and for the first time in a long time wanted to genuinely laugh.

She was drawn away from her thoughts when the crowd packed onto the astroturf lawn began to roar with applause. It hardly surprised her when Randall Flagg stepped up to a podium between Ralph and Larry, grinning that same grin she had begun to know so well from her dreams. He was reading from a paper scroll, but as he began to read, Maggie stopped hearing it. The claps and shouts from the crowd were gone. All she could hear were the whispers, slowly growing louder.

( _YOU AIN'T SEEN THE DEVIL YET._ )

( _YOU BURNED ME!)_

 _(HE WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD HE WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD)_

 _(DEATH BY DISMEMBERMENT)_

Maggie looked before her, and she understood. There were two great steel rings rigged with ropes tied around the wrists and ankles of Larry Underwood and Ralph Brentner. The dark man was going to pull them apart, then send their heads back to the Free Zone on giant sticks. Then, in the spring, he was going to come for them. He was going to kill all the good ones left in the world, and then the world would be swallowed by his darkness. He would even kill his own minions. He had just taken them along for the ride. They were just the desert's pawns. Then the world would be _his._ Maggie couldn't even fathom what would happen after that, how it would end. She thought suddenly of a line from a poem she only vaguely remembered, but she couldn't remember the title or who it was by. _This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper._

But then something occurred to her, was mankind the world? There were other things out there, and she figured it was probably just typical human arrogance that had led her all this time to believe things would just stop after they were gone. She could see him, the dark man clop-clop-clopping down an old dusty road, his hands in the pockets of his worn jeans. The crows and the rat and the wolves would follow him in a train, a sick sort of caravan.

And someone would walk beside him. Someone Maggie had once thought just to be a man with horns, and a pitchfork, and a long red cape. But she knew now that's not what he was, maybe he wasn't even just one thing. He was everywhere. In the face of her father and the poison that he drank, in the hands of the soldier and the gun that he carried, and in the maggot crawling out of Colleen's long dead button nose. He was the smell of the burning bodies and the way the fire licked the sky. She could see his reflection in the razor, and in the shining doorknob she never could open. She could smell him here, the musty smell of mildew mixed with vomit and sawdust. And she could smell him in the hospital room of Nick Andros. But was he a man? No, he was an it. An it that was inside of everyone. And in that moment, to Maggie, things all came together and made such cruel, perfect sense. This was how it was meant to be, this is the way the world ends. It's in everyone, it's everywhere. There's no stopping it, it's been there through all of time. In the bubonic plague, in the settlers of the new world, in slavery, in war, in every single moment since the beginning of everything. Why shouldn't it be everywhere at the end? The world belongs to it, and now it's decided to take what it wants once and for all.


	26. Chapter Fourteen: Part Four

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Part Four:** _September 1990_

 **Chapter Fourteen:** Part Four

Maggie knew it wasn't _everything_ , but it was most things. And for a second, she wondered why she had been chosen, and who chose her. Why hadn't she gone to Vegas? Why hadn't she killed herself after Sean died? After Missy and Colleen died? After her father put the scar on her cheek? She was just a waitress, she wasn't good or bad. She just was. Before she thought it was a choice, but now she knew better. Everyone was going to the same place, everyone needed to be punished. It was almost like she couldn't remember anything anymore but this, and the bad things. The bad things that had been chasing her for a long time, the bad things she had done her best to hide from. But then, the whispers grew to be too much, and she almost couldn't think. Just watch. Randall Flagg rolled up his scroll, that twisted smile still painted to his tan face. She thought she saw Larry say something, but she couldn't be sure. She wondered vaguely why the night sky had no stars.

( _LAURA BETTER RUN._ )

( _YOU AIN'T SEEN THE DEVIL YET.)_

 _(HE CAN CALL THE WOLVES.)_

 _(HIS DUMMY FRIEND PULLED A GUN ON ME. MOTHERFUCKER.)_

 _(LAURA BETTER RUN.)_

The voices stopped. There was nothing. Maggie saw the whole crowd part ways, making an aisle in the center. Ralph and Larry's faces were serene, and Randall Flagg just stared ahead with the same cold fire in his eyes she'd seen when Lloyd had mentioned Nick in her dream. _Something's wrong,_ Maggie thought wildly. _Something's wrong something's wrong something's wrong._ She watched as a red ATV crept down through the sea of people, and on the back was a big metal tank. It looked like a gasoline tank, but Maggie wasn't really sure. The man driving the ATV looked like a monster and he reminded Maggie eerily of Sean's burning corpse. His skin had a gray pallor, and it was peeling off in soupy layers, almost as though he were melting. Most of his hair was gone, along with his fingernails and his teeth. He had a grotesque burn on one half of his face, and his mouth was crooked from where his jaw drooped on that side. His eyes were a shiny silver and they bulged out of their sockets.

Maggie saw the man she recognized as Lloyd approach this melting monster man, but only out of the corner of her eye. She was focused on Randall Flagg, his face oddly inquisitive as he looked towards the tank on the back of the ATV. There was a twinkle in his eye, and Maggie wasn't sure if it was one of glee or fury. She glanced again to Larry and Ralph, and to her surprise, Larry was grinning like a madman. Ralph's face was stony, his cheeks flushed and beads of sweat shining on his forehead. But his eyes were clear, that of someone who had just gotten over a dreadful fever. She looked back to the dark man, his long, black hair blown back in the gentle evening breeze. She still couldn't hear anything, and it occurred to her that this was how Nick felt constantly. Or, how he _had_ felt when he was still really there.

Suddenly, the dark man looked up at her, and _smiled._ If Maggie had been able to gasp, she would've. _Can he see me?_ she thought fearfully, wanting to cry. _How can he see me? I'm not there._ But, there was no mistaking it. Her eyes were locked with his. His sardonic smile made her feel like a flower wilting in the hot haze of summer. She felt a sudden gust of wind, and as she did, Randall Flagg's face began to change. He was no longer the man in the jean jacket and the worn cowboy boots. He was something else, _the_ something else. His smile was gone, replaced with a look of rage Maggie felt had only been rivaled by her father on the nights that he wore his rings. This anger was something animal, and predatory. Maggie couldn't even really register what she was seeing; the monster and the nothingness before her didn't have a name. Only then did she realize this was the thing she'd running from all these years, the monster that she could see everywhere she looked. The monster she could feel anywhere. He no longer had eyes, _it_ no longer had eyes, but for some reason Maggie could still feel it's gaze.

( _Nowhere man, the world is at your command…_ )

( _You ain't seen the devil yet._ )

She understood then, that this was the way it was supposed to be. The face of the monster was daring her to give in. Her, and Larry, and Ralph. And the goodness in the people of Vegas. She understood that no one was all bad, she knew because _it_ was the real all bad. This was the black and white. She saw Mother Abagail, she saw the goodness. She saw Nick, and Tom, and Sean, and Missy, and Finn, and Colleen. People were good, people were broken and tired and sad and misled, but people were good. They were the good, and she was their representative. This was her stand, and she could not look away. Look into the real face of the dark man, the one Tom Cullen had seen in his dreams. The one Tom Cullen had faced, the one Maggie MacNeil had spent her life running from. She stared, as the emotions melted away, as the dark man's anger showed more potent in his non-face. She thought she saw a hand, a translucent hand, fly down before the face of the dark man. But she couldn't be sure, perhaps it was just a trick of the light from the city around them. But for a moment, she thought she could see _fear_. The dark man was afraid, of her or the hand, Maggie wasn't sure. But for that split second, when she could see the cowardice of the dark man, she felt the victory. She felt the exaltation. She had proved something. Something about all of them. About the people.

But then, in a flash, she only saw a crow. It flew from the marble steps up into the night sky. The clothes of the dark man sat in a heap where he had been standing. Maggie looked back to Larry and Ralph, and though she still couldn't be sure, she thought she saw them laughing. She looked back to the tank, and once again she didn't know if she saw a hand or a shadow. It passed through the tank, and suddenly, the whispers were back.

( _TAKE US HOME._ )

( _I WILL FEAR NO EVIL._ )

The light was overwhelming and unbearable. It flashed all around Maggie, and she could see nothing else. It was all gone, and to Maggie it looked as though the night had suddenly turned to day.

 **Author's Note:**...And once again I've broken my promises about when I'm posting. I am SO sorry! But here it is. The last part of the last chapter! All that's left is the epilogue. ; )

Thank you so much! Have a great day!

Peace and love.


	27. Epilogue

**Disclaimer** : _The Stand_ and all its characters belong to Stephen King.

 **Epilogue:** _May 1992_

It was night, and the window was open as usual. The room was cramped now, having to fit the desk _and_ the bed. At first, they'd thought about making the living room into the master bedroom, but Maggie was ultimately glad they hadn't. She liked that when people came over they sat on couches instead of beds. She thought about that first night Mother Abagail's specials had met in their living room, when Larry was still alive, and Frannie and Stu still lived in Boulder. Now they were far away, they had taken the baby and headed for the Atlantic Ocean almost a year ago. There were no phones anymore, and there probably wouldn't be for a long time. But, she knew they were there. She had dreams of them sometimes. She even knew that they had stopped in Hemingford Home on their way to Maine (Ogunquit, Maine, to be exact. Frannie's old hometown.) to the visit house that they had only ever seen in their dreams. The baby would be walking and talking by now, and Maggie could hardly believe it. _Time flies when you're having fun,_ she thought ruefully. She never could kick that bitterness all the way. Maggie had decided she was just simply no good at goodbyes. A wind whistled lightly through the crack in the window, and Maggie shivered as goosebumps rose all down her bare arms. She nestled more tightly under the covers and sighed wistfully. If there was one thing that she missed about North Carolina, it was definitely the weather. In North Carolina, April meant the heat was there to stay. Now it was the first day of May, and it still sometimes dipped below fifty during the nights. Maggie thought it funny that she could still remember North Carolina so vividly, but had not been there in nearly two years. But, you never really forget the place you grew up, do you?

In some ways, though, Maggie almost felt like the Free Zone was where she had truly grown up. Before the plague, she was only a little girl stuck in the past. A little girl on the run. Now she felt like she really had a place, she really _fit_ somewhere. When Maggie had first found the Polaroid, she had thought it was the best camera out there. But since starting work for _The Free Zone Times_ she had a much nicer one. And still, it didn't cost her a cent. But she still used her Polaroid at home. She almost wished they had chosen a bigger house back when first arriving in Boulder, then there would be more wall space to fit all the photographs. But, she figured it was worth just to have the garden and the blue door. Looking at those pictures had become easier over time, as Maggie discovered that it was okay to miss someone. But missing someone wasn't something you should spend your whole life doing. Everyone had someone they missed, and if everyone was wallowing in their own misery all the time, nothing would get done. She even had some new favorites, including the one of Frannie in the hospital holding baby Peter after he'd finally gotten over the superflu. Maggie still felt dread thinking back to that long winter as she laid awake, listening to the silence. The cicadas weren't back for summer yet.

Peter was born on January 4, 1991. And that was still five days before Stu and Tom Cullen had finally returned. Peter, named for Frannie's father, had come down with the superflu just after he was born. So, he wasn't allowed home until January 20 anyway. It seemed having one parent with immunity to Captain Tripps was enough, and Peter survived. Maggie had been there for the first five days though, sitting up with Frannie long into the night as she cried, switching off to go watch Nick when Lucy would show up in the morning. Lucy, five months pregnant herself, had still been reeling from Larry's death at that point. And it turned out to be good for both Frannie and Lucy, both women who had lost their husbands. Well, Lucy was the one who had really lost her husband. But, despite Maggie constantly assuring her that she had seen Stu in her dreams, and that he and Tom Cullen were traveling back to Boulder (slowly but surely), Frannie had refused to believe her. This would have made Maggie frustrated, but she understood. Frannie was just trying not to get her hopes up.

While Maggie was obviously overjoyed when Tom Cullen got back, late on the evening of January 9 as the snow showered from the sky, she had known he was coming. And Nick still wasn't awake. Since the big fire, as Maggie thought of it, she had pretty much accepted that Nick was as good as dead. Sure, she still read to him and stayed with him as much as she could. But but she was just waiting for the six month mark. _Then_ , she'd kill herself. Because even though she knew the dark man wasn't after them anymore, the dreams persisted, and she knew he wasn't gone. He was on an island somewhere. Somewhere the plague hadn't been able to reach. But her dreams of him had grown even more foggy, and she wondered if one day they might cease altogether. And though that would make sleeping easier, there was a part of Maggie that knew having the dreams was better. That way she could know where he was, to know if he was coming closer. And Maggie had decided she couldn't live in a world both without Nick, and _with_ Randall Flagg. She'd had the whole winter to think about it, and her decision was final. On March 2, six months to the day after the bombing, she and Nick would die. It all seemed very Romeo and Juliet to Maggie, and thinking of that made her smile even though she had hated reading the play in school.

After Stu and Tom returned in January, things started to really get up and running in the Free Zone. Even though there was no real money anymore, people had jobs. They were getting back to normal, living life in a way that was both old and new. But still Maggie sat at Nick's bedside and waited to die. Still, even as Frannie and Stu brought their new baby home, Lucy prepared for the birth of hers, and as Tom Cullen added even more decorations to his house. Maggie sat and waited.

Tom would visit the most, and it was during one on these visits that Maggie discovered Tom Cullen had dreams like hers. Dreams where Nick would speak to him. Maggie discovered it was Nick who had guided Tom away from Vegas, told him how to treat Stu after he'd caught pneumonia, and led him back to the Free Zone through the snow. While Nick Andros lay in the hospital room, silent and still as the seasons past, he had saved two lives. This almost made Maggie want to push back the six month mark, the day Nick would die, but in her mind it was set in stone. She hadn't told anyone she was planning to kill herself, of course. They would no doubt try to stop her, especially Fran. But Maggie thought they would really just be better off, she was practically in a coma herself. Just a dead weight who no longer really talked to anyone besides Tom and Nick, and occasionally Stu, Frannie, or Lucy. She wasn't special, and she never had been. Her work was done, and she had made her stand. She was tired and she felt like she had already done enough. She wanted to see the people that she had loved before the plague, the people that might not even know her if they saw her today. She would miss the new people that she loved, and maybe they would even miss her. But Maggie knew that if Mother Abagail had been right, she'd see them again. She was most anxious to see Larry, oddly enough, more than anyone else. She hadn't seen Larry in a long time. But she had seen him make his stand, just as she had made hers. She wanted to tell him about the pictures Joe drew of him, of Lucy and the baby. But maybe he already knew.

. . .

Everything was still caked in ice on Groundhog Day, 1991. Maggie thought she could already guess there would be six more weeks of winter, and it almost made her laugh when she thought about the fact that she wouldn't get to see the end of this winter. This winter that seemed to last for years, as she watched Nick Andros stay the same. The nurses would send her away occasionally, telling her that she didn't want to see his bedsores and that she should go home and rest. But Maggie still hated going home, to the house with the blue door, the house that was a symbol of everything she'd lost. She felt bad and selfish for thinking that way. Every single person had lost something, every single person had lost _a lot._ But it was just too much. That's what she would tell herself. Every waking moment, there was a dull ache in her head, and when she slept she either saw people who had died long ago, or the dark man still out there somewhere. Like a ghost who haunts slowly, taking time to plot revenge. She hadn't had a dream with Nick since the big fire, and in a way it felt like he had left her. She hadn't had the chance to run the suicide idea by him, so she was just using her own best judgment.

It was late in the afternoon, and the sun was out. The snow glistened in the bright rays. Maggie was reading aloud from _The Grapes of Wrath_ , and she thought the Great Depression seemed to somehow mirror Captain Tripps. Everybody lost everything. She was feeling surprisingly good, Tom had visited that morning, telling her about how he'd started painting. He brought in a little picture of a flamingo he'd painted, and it was pretty decent. Maggie was happy that Tom found somewhere to belong, and decided against asking him if he had had any odd dreams lately. It was rare, but Tom too still had dreams of the dark man, and even Nick. But it was a good day, and Maggie didn't want to spoil either of their moods.

Maggie was drowsy by the time the sky started to tinge pink and orange, the sunlight dissolving behind mountains peppered with evergreens. That was something she loved about Boulder, it didn't smell at all like bodies anymore, it smelled like trees. She yawned a little as she read, making her eyes water. She sighed heavily, marking her place in her book and raising her long arms above her head to stretch. She tucked the loose hair from her ponytail behind her ears, and pulled back the sleeve of her light pink sweater to check her watch. _2:02_ , it read. Maggie gasped a little, and immediately felt guilty for doing so. It was only a watch, and now it had stopped. Because there was no way the sun was setting at two o'clock in the afternoon, even if it was winter. But it still made Maggie feel like crying, the very last piece of the old life was gone, and several pieces of the new life were gone as well. Soon she would be gone too.

But, that's when the beeping sped up. Maggie had mostly tuned out the noise from Nick's heart monitor, as people often did with sounds that were constantly around them. At first, Maggie wondered why they were monitoring his heart rate anyway. But then she realized that without it, there would be no real way to know he was dead until someone felt for a pulse or something. He could lay there for hours, even maybe as Maggie read a book to him, dead without anyone noticing. So, for those five long months while Maggie sat waiting for that machine to flatline, it continued to beep. Slowly and steadily. And on the afternoon of February 2, when Maggie heard the beeps quicken slightly, she was surprised it was even there. She'd forgotten about its existence.

When she looked up, she thought it was a dream. His eyes were open, only slightly, but noticeably so. Those expressive, dark eyes that Maggie hadn't seen in what she felt like was a hundred years. She sat motionless, frozen in shock. _It's not real. It's not real. It's not real,_ she thought to herself over and over. Like Frannie, she didn't want to get her hopes up. She watched as Nick groggily opened his eyes, blinking slowly at first, and then becoming fully alert all of a sudden.

He was, understandably, confused about where he was. The walls were drab and but the light from outside made them appear an odd shade of magenta, and he felt kind of like he was just stepped into Munchkinland after a tornado. _I don't think we're in Kansas anymore,_ Nick thought, and almost laughed. Images of Pratt, Kansas and Julie Lawry flashed through his tired mind. He swallowed, his dry throat producing an audible click. He couldn't really remember, but in other ways he could. He saw Tom Cullen wearing Ralph's hat, he saw Stu's leg in a splint, he saw a makeshift Christmas that Tom and Stu had thrown together as they trekked their way through the mountains and back to Boulder. And he saw fire, a lot of fire. A big fire. He remembered these things only hazily, but other things were more clear. Ralph's house, the box full of scarves, Maggie standing out on the pavement.

Nick looked over, only now registering that this was a hospital and he was in one of their famous gowns. He saw Maggie sitting on the couch, stunned. Her face was pale, but her cheeks had a light flush. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her hands were shaking in her lap. But she was there, and she was looking at him. Nick remained still there for a minute looking as surprised as she was, but then slowly sat up. He winced at his incredibly stiff muscles, but was able to lean his back against the pillow. Hastily, Maggie got up and took the remote for his bed. She raised his mattress so he could sit up straight, her face emotionless. He smiled at her, but she stood next to his bed with her arms crossed, stone-faced. Nick waved at her, then made the _a-okay_ symbol with his thumb and his forefinger. Her expression softened a little, and then she put her hand over her mouth ( _Some things never change,_ Nick thought at the old mannerism, and cracked a wry grin in spite of himself.)

Maggie stood with her hand over her mouth, tears welling in her eyes as Nick stared at her, continuing to smile. When he had given her the _a-okay_ symbol, she knew it was real. In her dreams, he could always hear, he wouldn't need to use sign language. She finally gave in, and was soon sobbing, her head in her hands. She didn't look back at him before running to the door of his hospital room.

" _NURSE_!" she cried, ignoring the tears that streamed down her face. There were so many emotions bubbling and overflowing inside her, she didn't know which to pick. Nick was back. He had made his stand.

. . .

Late that night, after everyone had come back to visit Nick upon hearing of his awakening, Maggie sat on that old couch and held his now warm hand. They were talking about all that had happened in the last five months. Maggie spoke about her dreams of the big fire. Tom Cullen was sound asleep in the green chair in the corner of the room, and Maggie felt like everything had finally come full circle. The three of them back together again, all of them alive. At first, Maggie was worried things would be different between her and Nick, like one of them would have changed beyond recognition in their five months apart from each other. But had it really been apart? Maggie wasn't sure. But now, as Maggie sat holding his hand in the silence, things felt the same. Maybe even better.

"I had dreams about you y'know," Maggie said, breaking the peaceful silence. She was looking down at their hands, forgetting that in the real world Nick was still deaf. He took one hand and gently lifted her chin, raising his eyebrows. It was almost a perfect reenactment of the first day they'd met.

"Right, sorry. I um...I had dreams where you could hear and you could talk. Like you told me you could in your Mother Abagail dreams. It was weird, and it would always end in fire," she said softly.

She was exhausted, it was only then that she began to feel how tired she was. She felt like she could sleep for a hundred years, and still wake up needing coffee. Nick's eyes widened as she told him, and he abruptly let go of her hand to start writing. Though it hadn't really felt like five months to Nick, he couldn't really even tell if there had been time in his dreams, he still felt relieved to see the things he missed. Like his trusty old notepad. He wrote quickly, his hand trembling. He'd felt so jumpy and alive since waking up, almost the opposite of Maggie. He showed her the pad, and she furrowed her brows in confusion.

 _I dreamed of you, too,_ the note read.

"You dreamed of _me_?" she asked in confusion. She thought he'd only had dreams (or visions, neither of them were sure) of Tom Cullen, to help him get back. Nick nodded excitedly, and continued writing.

 _Yeah. I heard your voice and your laugh, it was amazing. But it was really strange, I felt like I was outside of myself. And in one, you were with the dark man you were staring at him. Just standing and staring, neither of you moved. It was like you were statues, and I was just there watching. But soon, the dark man was gone. I don't know if he dissolved or just left with the blink of an eye. And soon I just saw you standing there, in the middle of nothing, wearing this long blue dress._

. . .

Maggie awoke with a shudder, realizing she had somehow wriggled out from under the covers in her sleep. The sky was lighter now, but the sun was not quite up. The alarm clock read half past four on the morning of May 2, 1992. She sighed heavily and took back some of the covers from Nick's side. He was turned away from her and in the dim light she could see the goosebumps on his bare back. She rolled closer to him and began dozing again. This time, she was happy with the silence, grateful that the cicadas weren't buzzing and the baby wasn't crying. Abagail was four months old, and only just now starting to sleep straight through the night. Maggie was always the one to wake up obviously, but every other time she'd nudge Nick and he'd get up without the need for explanation, heading straight for what had once been the office. If there were to be any more babies, which they were planning on, they'd definitely have to move into a bigger house. But, for now, Maggie was enjoying where they were. She was living life in the moment, as she had been told to do by many over the years. Only now was she really starting to listen to their instructions. Maggie figured this was another symptom of being an adult, sometimes you knew when to swallow your pride and listen.

Because, as Maggie often thought, everything can change in a second. One minute you're a waitress, the next you're staring into the face of evil. She sometimes wondered if it had all been good enough, if they had fought the best fight. And, after all, there wasn't any way for everything to be good. There was always some evil, Maggie knew that for sure. And Nick was the only one she'd told about her dream of Randall Flagg on the island somewhere. Everyone was always searching for the ultimate happiness, for the ultimate good. For a time where they wouldn't have to worry anymore. But that didn't really exist, at least not in Maggie's eyes. She didn't know if people could really change, she didn't know if all of this would happen again in another hundred years, or another million. She didn't know if all that they had done had helped anything at all.

But what she did know was that there was good, and there were people you could count on even when _everything_ has gone to shit. And there was only now. Maggie smiled a little and yawned, her eyes getting heavy. She thought of the good people, so many who had made the ultimate sacrifice for them. The people who had really saved the world. She saw the faces of her mother, her brother, Missy, Finn, Colleen, Judge Farris, Dayna Jurgens, Larry, Ralph, Glen, and Mother Abagail. And for once, thinking of these faces didn't make her feel angry. She didn't scream, or cry, or throw a Corelle plate at the wall. She felt warm, and she hoped someday she would see them again. She hoped they got all that they had earned. She moved a little closer to Nick, and felt the heat radiating off of him. Somewhere outside, a crow squawked in the early light of the morning, and Maggie thought nothing of it.

 **Author's Note:** Wow. It's done. Maggie made her stand. I hope everyone who read this story liked it! I felt like there weren't enough Nick Andros stories, so here is my attempt. Thank you so much for reading!

Peace and love.


End file.
